Fixing the Connie-How I put the Dumb in Dumb Bunny

[cjjd6901]

Hey Folks:

I need your advice.  I purchased a newer DCC Bachmann Consolidation.  I thought it was a repurchase of one of mine I had sent to auction.  Upon its arrival it was placed on the rails.  Nothing.  It was dead.  Hmmm. 

Layout is in the DC world.  There is no easy nor instant access to DCC nearby.  I thought it feels like the decoder has been assigned an address.     Naturally, I chose to cut the decoder and solder the board to hardwire it.   

 Well, it runs fine now.  It seems to suffer headlight loss in running forward.  I tried a couple of combinations of soldering the leads and such but no luck.

Any ideas?

Or ISO clean Connie decoder   

[glakedylan]

is it dc bulb or LED that you are working with?

[cjjd6901]

I would assume....it is the LED version, but I will need to remove the boiler shell to check.

[SkipGear]

They have been LED from day one. Polarity of the wires is important.

 If it was one of the DCC included versions and you removed the whole decoder board, then you blew up the LED as the resistors for the LED were on the board. The DCC included version just get a part of the board broken off and jumpers solder across a few points to remove/bypass the decoder.

If it was the DCC ready version with the decoder installation in the boiler, then more than likely you wired the headlight backwards as the factory color codes for the headlight were backwards from the NMRA standard.

[cjjd6901]

Interesting.  While I have not looked at the locomotive this evening.

I have a headlight "lit" when in reverse.  When the locomotive travels forward then the light is dark. 

Wonder if I can start again with a replacement board?  Ever see those at the store level?

[peteski]

Interesting.  While I have not looked at the locomotive this evening.

I have a headlight "lit" when in reverse.  When the locomotive travels forward then the light is dark. 

Wonder if I can start again with a replacement board?  Ever see those at the store level?

Sounds like it is an LED headlight and you need to reverse its polarity to get it to light up when traveling forward.  I can't give you any specific instructions since I don't have that loco and I don't know how yours is wired.

[SkipGear]

The question is, which version was it? Did it have a decoder board in the tender or did it have a decoder soldered into a space in the boiler?

If it is the DCC included version....
You may have gotten lucky and Bachmann kept the original headlight PC board from the DC versions and it has a resistor on it also. Just flip the wires and you are good. From the other loco's that use that decoder board, they don't have resistors at the headlight so I didn't expect the 2-8-0 to have them either.

Look at the tender on the bottom of Marks (Spookshow) page...  http://www.spookshow.net/loco/spec280.html
If it has that tender then it is the DCC included version.

[cjjd6901]

Thanks Tony and Mark for your help!

I did go to the Spookshow site.  I have the second version with the board in the tender. 

The solution was to replace the LED, which I did toast, with an Atlas light chip from a geep.  After a bit of soldering and trimming it went together fine.  And I have a forward headlight.

 It appears that my piece did not get the "power reverse" details.  Also the OOP piece of the driver assembly had broken sometime and will need a replacement.

All in all it was rewarding to partially disassemble a steamer and return it to service!

Best,

   Chris

[peteski]

A toasted LED will not light up at all - period. That makes no sense to me.  Maybe you simply soldered the new LED in reverse (making it work correctly). 

[cjjd6901]

Toasting was done after the rigorous diagnostic proceedures

Locomotive is together again and there is light.

[peteski]

Toasting was done after the rigorous diagnostic proceedures

Locomotive is together again and there is light.

Ah, gocha!