04 The GE 44 tonner side project

Well here it is. The GE 44 tonner from Bachmann.

Man that thing is small. This is going to be a challenge learning how to work on these miniature engines and rolling stock. My initial run on the Kato starter set DC oval was unimpressive. This unit has DCC built in but is suppose to run on DC also. Some googling revealed that the performance of these units is kinda hit and miss. The ones that run poorly usually have a bad connection somewhere. I wonder if the cause might be something else though.

Many people replace the Bachmann decoder with something else. I need to decide if I am going to run a DC or DCC layout <sigh>. Actually I'm kinda stoked to learn more about DCC. Being a network engineer, the concept of DCC and all the electronics and coding and hacking it promises is very attractive. However, the simplicity of DC is also very attractive. I really want sound with the engines and I see two ways to get that. With DC, Kato has an external sound module that works really well but it doesn’t support running multiple engines at once which is something I want to do. So I guess that moves me towards the DCC camp. I think I will wait until more of the layout develops to make a decision.

Update: by the time I finished typing this, I came to the conclusion that I will remove the DCC module from this 44 tonner and run it as DC. Later, I'll re-convert it back to DCC using a sound module from some yet to be determined vendor.

Update: This rig ran great on a test oval made of Atlas track and a really old MRC powerpack. Now I'm not sure what I am going to do with the DCC module. Maybe keep it in and replace the Kato powerpack? This site has a really good comparison of the voltage waveform outputs of various powerpacks. The Kato powerpack is surprisingly noisy and that might be causing the decoder some confusion.