Hornby Tri-ang D6830

[Potrail2378]

Hi, I have an unusual question here. I recently bought a job lot of diesel loco's. I enjoy tinkering, and I convert old stuff from DC to DCC. I have taken the body off a Hornby Tri-ang class 37, running number D6830. My initial questions were - why has it got two motors, and is this normal?

However, upon closer inspection, it appears to be (as the motor trade would say), a 'cut and shut'. There is a seam two thirds of the way down the chassis where it looks like it's been 'welded' together, it's a pretty good conversion actually. But how will I get this to run on DCC? I'm guessing that one decoder won't be powerful enough.

Any help or advice you can give me will be very much appreciated.

[96RAF]

I double motored a Class 56, which was a poor performer and found that on DCC the only way to synch the motors was to have a decoder each and fiddle with CV settings to get them both to run nice together. I tried with a single hi- current capable decoder but it was hopeless. The main problem was kick start voltage. One motor would start but the other would drag its wheels until the applied voltage was enough to get it turning then the loco would shoot off and need instant throttle back. With twin decoders it was possible to get both to kick off together but the result was not to my liking so in the end I gave up on it and reverted to a single new motor.

[Fishmanoz]

And the obvious missing from Rob’s reply - use the same address for both decoders if you want to try this.

And the not so obvious - given Rob’s finding of the motors not starting at the same speed step, you probably need a decoder which can adjust Vstart, which means not a Hornby 8249.