64
HELPFUL HINTS FOR OPERATION
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Passing an old style consist: Use ASSIGN LOCO TO CAB to transfer an old
style consist to any other Cab on the system. This causes a swap between the
active loco/consist on your Cab and the active loco/consist on the target Cab.
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Nesting consists: Say a heavy freight is approaching a long grade and helpers
are needed. The train’s locomotives are an advanced consist. The two GP9
pushers are also consisted using an advanced consist. The pusher consist is
brought out of the siding at the base of the grade and put in place. An “old style”
consist is now set up using the freight’s lead loco number and the pusher’s lead
loco number. You can now operate the entire train to the grade crest as one unit.
Upon reaching the cutoff siding at the crest, the “old style” consist is killed and the
pushers are selected to move to the siding. The freight consist continues on while
the pushers drift back down the hill.
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When setting up an old style Consist, you may want to use a Loco number that
does not exist for the first Loco (Consist address). This will allow you to put the
actual lead loco in recall to operate the headlight, and the sound loco to operate the
Horn and Bell.
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· If a cab does not respond after plugging it in, press the ENTER key a couple of
times. This will cause it to exit from any mode it was in when it was unplugged.
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When making your own cables using RJ plugs be SURE the connectors are
“flipped” over at opposite ends of the wire. See the illustration on page 21 for
proper cab bus cabling.
Using the Power Cab/ProCab
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In DCC there are 2 kinds of addresses (loco numbers), long and short. When
entering the address of the loco you wish to control long addresses from 1 to 127
are entered by preceding the actual number by a zero. Short addresses are
entered without a leading zero. Long addresses in the range of 1 -127 are
displayed on your cab with an asterisk before the loco number. ie: “
*
042” indicates
the long address for loco forty-two and “042” indicates the short address. Most
modern decoders made since 1997 support long (4 digit) addresses. Older Lenz,
Digitrax and MRC decoders only support the short address.
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When entering numbers if you make a mistake there is no “erase” or “backup”
key. If you keep pressing digits the display will clear allowing you to start entering
your number over again.
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If you wish to abandon what you are doing when in the middle of entering a
number push the “PROG/ESC” key and you will be returned to normal operation.
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During various operations where you are doing something other than normal
loco operation such as “set up consist” or “select accessory” speed control of the
loco is not available, however the Emergency Stop will still work if you need to stop
your loco.
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Programming on the programming track the command station first reads the
value of a location (such as “short address” or “acceleration”) and displays it on
your cab. If you wish to accept this value just press ENTER to continue or type in
a new number if you want to change it.
Programming Track
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The command station checks for a short circuit on the programming track
before applying power. If your loco has lights or other current drawing devices
wired directly to the track instead of a decoder function output the command
station will probably think is has a short and will say “SHORT DETECTED” each
time you start to program this loco. If you wish you will be allowed to override the
short and continue. This short detection is there to protect decoders from damage
if they are miswired. For this reason we always try a new decoder installation on
the programming track first instead of putting it directly on the layout. If the
programming works the installation is most likely correct.