All other CV's are as the default values.

UKMS Digital Services

The second in an occasional series of DCC decoder installations.

Step 1 : First, if already fitted, remove the brake gear. Then, using the screwdriver, remove the front and rear cross bogies. Beneath these you will see two even smaller screws front and rear located just at the back of the buffer beams (Marked A and B in the photo below). Remove these and put all this safely to one side.



Step 2 : Lift off the main locomotive body.

Step 3 : Above the motor you will find three capacitors. Since this is not a DCC ready locomotive and we cannot be sure that these will not affect the DCC signals, remove them with the small snips.

Step 4 : At the front of the locomotive there is the standard Bachmann small circuit board secured to the chassis with a small screw. Remove the screw and place in the 'spares' pile. This will not be reused.

Step 5 : Underneath the circuit board you will see a red and a black wire coming out of the chassis block. These are from the pickups and you need to use the soldering iron to unsolder these from the Bachmann circuit board.

Step 6 : The other red and black wires from the circuit board go to the motor connections and you need to unsolder these from the motor connections. Now you are left with the circuit board with two wires attached. Place this in the 'spares' pile as it will not be reused.

Step 7 : Capacitor Removal - whilst this locomotive may run adequately with the capacitors left in place, personally I remove all capacitors from all motors and boards. I stress this is my preference as my belief is that capacitors are not needed on any DCC installation and can actually be detrimental to smooth running.
Please be aware though that this may void any guarantee from the locomotive manufacturers.



Step 8 : Cut the wires on the decoder to length. I cut the red and black wires to about 4cm in length and the orange and grey wires to about 8cm. I left the blue, white and yellow wires to full length just in case I want to add lights to the locomotive later. You need to wrap the ends of these wires in tape (I use masking tape) so that they cannot short out on the chassis. Then wind them into a small coil and bind this together with tape.

Step 9 : Bare the ends of the red, black, orange and grey wires from the decoder, about 5mm is plenty for this, and carefully tin the ends with solder.

Step 10 : Cut two small lengths of shrink wrap sleeving (about 1cm) and thread these onto the the pickup wires.

Step 11 : Solder together the red wire from the decoder with the red wire from the pickups and the black wire from the decoder with the black wire from the pickups.

Step 12 : Bring the shrink wrapped sleeve from step 8 up over each join and heat to shrink it to fit. I use the body of the soldering iron to do this NOT the tip.

Step 13 : Solder the orange and grey wires to the motor pickups. Make sure there is no way for these to touch the chassis or any metal part of the motor. If you think there is a possiblity of this happening cover with a small piece of masking tape.

Step 14 : Take the decoder and the coiled lighting wires and tuck them all into the smoke box of the body. There is plenty of room here so you can tuck them as far as they go and just ensure that none of the wires can get caught up in the worm gearing.



Step 15 : Refit the main body and put everything back in place. Just the reverse of step 1.

Step 16 : Off to the test track and check the CV settings. When I did the above I inadvertantly put the Orange and Grey wires the wrong way round (see picture) so had to change CV29 to 1. As for Dither, I have found that the best settings are CV56 = 2 and CV57 = 25.

This page last updated on
10 October, 2009