Converting Hornby Triang vintage Diesel Shunter to DCC

[ColinB]

I haven't read all the posts on this subject but it sounds like most people have covered the conversion. I have done a load of DCC conversions, first thing I would suggest is if there is room fit an 8 pin socket. It makes debugging so much easier, if an 8 pin won't fit then use a 6 pin. Now as everyone has said you need to isolate the motor. Again it looks like in the post someone has covered this, but just in case. On the bend piece of wire that holds both brushes in place make sure both sides are insulated (one side should be already). Remove any wires connecting to the brushes.  Put the loco on the tracks and check it doesn't run. If you have a multimeter check that neither has a connection to the tracks. Now wire the loco pickups to pin 4 of the socket. Using a spare piece of wire connect pin 8 of the socket to the loco chassis, so on the non socket end solder a 6 ba or M2 solder tag and then find a suitable screw on the chassis to screw it to.. Now solder two wires one to pin 1 and another to pin 5  of the socket. Attach these to the motor brushes, either by soldering or using those bend pieces of copper.  Now with a multimeter check that these two wires have no connection to the tracks. Now for a X04 motor you are going to need something like a 2 amp DCC decoder, forget Hornby they don't make one with enough power and heat dissipation. I used a Zimo, but it is up to you, it needs to be at least 1.6 amps to cope with the motor stall current, but Zimo make a 2 amp that should be good. Before you put the decoder check continuity between pins on the socket, there should be no connection between any of them except 1 and 5 where you should read the impedance of the motor (about 20 ohms or less). Now if you have DC dummy header, put ii into the socket and check the loco runs on DC. If it does then it looks like your wiring is ok. Right now put the decoder in and set up the DCC controller so you are in programming mode. Now with the DCC controller check you can read CV 8 the manufacturers id. If it comes back with a value rather than FFFF then you are all set. I don't know what Railmaster does with the DCC decoder data but I assume it is so it can map CV data, I assume you will not be doing much with CV values so just enter your decoder in Railmaster as a Hornby one, hopefully it should work. If you use a 6 pin socket then you need to need to change the pin numbers. This is how I do it with all my locos and I have converted about 20, Limas, Hornbys and Bachmanns, with a socket it makes it so easy to debug. I must admit I have never done a X04 motor as generally I find them too noisy.

Hope this helps and I apologise if I have covered anything that anyboby else has said.

[Fishmanoz]

Hi Scott, can I ask a simple question - you've pulled up a 2-year old topic and added to the end of it without confirming to us that you are trying to convert the same loco as in the thread - an 08 shunter with X04 motor.  Can you confirm that this is the loco you are trying to convert?

 

If so, then the forum expert on these conversions is Margate-Richmond who used to run his own model railway business.  He's posted extensively earlier in the thread with detailed instructions for you to follow (nothing wrong with Colin's general advice above but M-R has all the specifics for this motor type and for other Tri-ang locos based on the literally hundreds of conversions he has done).