[5.7wrangler]

The majority of my trains are Bachmann. Within the past few months I have been sending in my old engines to them that needed work and I paid for the upgrade to DCC. I have also purchased a MRC Advance system that is awesome. I have converted 2 Aethern diesels to Digitrax DH100's and those run fine (they will not consist though) and as for the remainders, have a bunch of NCE D13SR decoders on the way for the remainder of my locos. As for the bachmann locos that are already installed; the diesels are quite noisy and the steamers are quiet. For some reason they are slow... Much slower than when they were on my old DC layout. Not sure why this is. The MRC Advance is putting plenty of power to the track... I have tried to program the engines with different values SV, AV, TV... Results are only noticed with the acceleration. Any ideas? Thanks.

 

[dozer]

Have you tried testing any under load? Like a pull of 10 plus cars and compare that way?

 

[5.7wrangler]

thanks

i appreciate this... i have not yet tried this but will now

 

[5.7wrangler]

ok, gave it a try and still have the same results but slower under load. the only idea that i can come up with is to somehow figure out the CV values that the bachmann decoders need. i called them the other day and they were not too helpfull. they told me to get a fleichman book and look it up for the standard CV values. i have the info for the NCE decoders but am worried about changing values and not being able to get them back to where they were before. thanks guys.

 

[dozer]

I wouldn't worry about that too much, most decoders have a default to factory setting in them. You may just need to play around with them is all. Just curious, what are you setting the T.V. at? Also what values are you using for the S.T. ?

 

[5.7wrangler]

my SV is at 1, my TV is at 4,5, or 6.

bachmann, did not provide reccomended values? not too sure why.

 

[dozer]

Try setting the sv at 0 and the decelration also to 0, then set t.v. to 999. Just as a start.

 

[tankist]

i found bachmann factory decoders not very good. had the same thing with slowness and no matter what i programmed apart from adress didn't change a thing. althoguh now i have powercab and things might be different (used MRC express at that time).
but at 20$ per nice digitrax i don't think it is a dilemma - plug those in and forget about your troubles. and spectrums are not bad runners at all.

 

[5.7wrangler]

thanks, i hope this will work. it is the same thing for the spectrums as it is the regular bachmanns.

 

[5.7wrangler]

will post the results shortly

 

[mr_x_ite_ment]

I run a lot of Bachmann's on my layout, and I don't have the trouble of them being slow. I have two Spectrum's, and they require a bit more power, but the other cheap ones with factory-installed decoders actually run VERY well. Are they noisy...sure...but it seems to have gotten more quiet over time. They seem to run smoothly though, with little power needed. I have the E-Z Command DCC (no ability to program CV's). Maybe it is something with the DCC system you have, Wrangler. I guess you could always try a new decoder, like Tank said. Good luck!

Chad