Inter-City 125 - Conversion from DC to DCC

[walkingthedog]

It's nothing to do with DCC or DC RDS. You would just need a power supply from the track to the dummy car, but I have just realised that the lights would stay on all the time with DCC so just ignore me.

[Fishmanoz]

Decoders are designed to allow for directional lighting on their white and yellow function outputs with blue common. It's just a matter of putting the right colour LEDs and series resistors on them - all explained in my Brian Lambert link at the top of

 

this page. Use the appropriate function key on your controller to turn this facility on or off.

 

Getting white at the front and red at the rear is just a matter of having the the white and red LEDs wired to white and yellow respectively at one end and

 

yellow and white respectively at the other. If you get it wrong, you could have red lights at the front all the time and white at the back. But then it's just a matter of swapping decoder output to them and it will be fixed.

 

And dummy cars have wheel

 

pickups just like the power cars so you can power the decoder in the dummy car if you are not using the permanent rake wire through single decoder solution SoT talked about. Should be easy to program them by having both on the programming track at the same

 

time to get the same address in them. Note the Lambert reference to some decoders needing a load across their orange/grey outputs before they will program.

 

WTD, really a very simple issue to have directional lighting on DCC, and only turned on when

 

you want it on, as the facility is built into decoders. Don't have to add diodes as you do for DC, just the lights, which means LED plus series resistor if using LEDs as most would these days.

[Augustus Caesar]

RDS... to put two decoders into the units for your 125 motor and dummy cars and have directional lighting just follow my article and you will get your wish.

 

There is no awkward wiring like a wire going from the motor car to the dummy car and the

 

lighting is not tricky at all when requiring white at the front and red at the rear.

 

You need two decoders, one for each car and they must be given the same unique number when programming them on the Elite... say 125 for both cars (obvious I know).

 

Then simply follow the wiring and soldering I give for alternating the white and yellow wires from each decoder and hey presto... directional lighting.

 

I have left NOTHING out of this scenario and all questions have been covered if you read the article

 

thoroughly. If anything, it is too simple. No offense intended to anyone here... :-)

 

You COULD go down the route of wiring everything yourself without the boards as SoT says but what's the point? Trying to line everything up for a start with the LED's

 

and lenses would drive me nuts!!

[The son of Triangman]

I agree with you Augustus. I will add though I have found giving the units the same unique number doesn't always work, nor does alternating the wiring. In theory it should be ok and in 9 out of 10 cases it works but isn't 100%, no idea why. I did a conversion

 

some time back that was a real pain, the rear unit was showing white light instead of red and alternating the wiring on the LEDs didn't help as it remained the same, programming the decoder didn't seem to work either, on the dummy unit I eneded up doing the

 

resistor trick where a resistor is placed across the motor control wires to simulate the motor load. That did the job and both units then worked properly. It was a stubborn beasty amd yet three other conversions of old HST's done at the same time gave no bother.

 

I

 

don't rely upon the light lenses, I simply drill out the holes and fit LED's, remove the light lens locating pins and fix in with a clear resin glue such as Humbrol clearfix. It saves a fiver or more on buying an extra board to do the same job.

[walkingthedog]

Fishmanoz said:


WTD, really a very simple issue to have directional lighting on DCC, and only turned on when you want it on, as the facility is built into decoders. Don't have to add diodes as you do for DC, just the lights, which means

LED plus series resistor if using LEDs as most would these days.

Thanks fishy. I'll get there one day.

[Augustus Caesar]

So, SoT, are you saying you had issues with the board or just the simple bare wiring tequnique?

 

The board I used is a second version bit it reads as if you have just used your own wiring. From what I gather there have no issues of non working boards

 

from BCT (Black Cat) or rather, poor directional lighting where both cars would run white or red together. Personally I have had absolutely no issues with the boards.

 

Costs to me where a single pound can be spent doing your wiring or a fiver to have

 

a board prebuilt is a no brainer. A fiver for each board is still a no brainer. I am also more than happy with the light through the lenses of the original cars' design and in no way wanted to damage the units by drilling holes for LED's. I like to run my

 

gear as is or as was with internal and invisible modifications if they are required.

 

Obviously sometimes mods need doing and they can't be helped and each person has their own way of doing stuff. So, from a purely simplistic way of thinking and to help

 

those guys who don't want to do too much to their locos I came up with the idea of letting everyone know how to wire the locos this way.

 

If I had a spare unit I would attempt to wire it the way you suggest just to give it a shot and would post another

 

set of instructions for that method.

 

Really, model railwaying is just a hobby and is down to individuality isn't it? That's what makes it all so unique in the modelling world. There are so many ideas and thoughts about how to do this, that and the other

 

that no-one really is going to copy anyone else's ideas from start to finish. That would be boring! Now borrowing one or two ideas and then adding your own - well, that's where the excitement is...

 

After all the discussion I would be intrigued to know

 

how many have actually gone ahead with this approach and maybe even how many choose to wire everything themselves... not as a contest but just to see how folk like to tacle stuff like this... anyway... onwards...

[The son of Triangman]

I had no issues with the wiring of the lights Augustus, it's a piece of cake, been using LED's and resistors since the 1970's in my work. The problem was a decoder issue and not wiring, the dummy loco decoder wouldn't program properly, a resistor placed

 

across the grey and orange wires simulated the load of a motor and then it all worked fine, I got white lights at the front when running forwards and Red at the back on the dummy car etc.

 

I don't use the boards as it's extra cash (£10+ for two units

 

for those boards you mention)that you don't recover on models that aren't valuable or that collectable.

 

It costs me less than a quid to fit lighting to each unit. The old HST's are two a penny and a twin car set with coach can be found for £15-£20 on

 

toy and train fairs in good working order so a minor modification doesn't matter to it's value that much.

 

 

[The son of Triangman]

Of course you can keep the light lense pins and you can simply replace the buld with two LED's one white and one red or a bi colour one if you can find one. I would do this on a mint boxed example but on an everyday runner that isn't worth much minor modifications

 

doesn't matter.

[Augustus Caesar]

Ah... I see that now SoT... I misread your words.

 

OK... so if I do pick one up for pennies I will maybe give that schematic a go. Can you explain how you wired it up? And I do remember that you used 3mm LED's is that right? I would have thought

 

maybe 1.8mm which are harder to buy but if the others work well I may use them.

 

One more question... did you use warm white?

[RDS]

@The son of Triangman

Thanks for your inputs on this fascinating thread.

The lens pins seem to work well and I am hoping that they work as well with the LED. I cannot see any advantage in drilling the plastic and not using them. (Just plenty of disadvantages!)

 

 

[Augustus Caesar]

It's down to taste RDS and I find that taking out the lenses and drilling was not for me and the LED's work fine with the lenses in place.

 

Due to the very nature of the loco design perfection is not going to be obtained either way by adding LED's

 

but at least it gives directional lighting and that's part of the fun... :-)

 

Nothing against SoT's method and some may do it that way and get great results but at least you're on a path now...

[RDS]

@AugustusCaesar

I have not managed to find a source for bi-colour, White / Red, 3 wire LED's yet though! Plenty of Green / Red.

I can find 2 wire White / Red ones, where you reverse polarity to change colour but that is no use for DCC.

 

[Rog RJ]

Have you tried looking for tri colour LEDs or full colour/multi colour LEDs?

[RDS]

@rog (RJ)

Whilst searching, a number of Tri-Colour LED's came up but it just appears that the 3rd colour is just a combination of the other 2 colours. They always seemed to be a Red/Green combination.

 

[Rog RJ]

Try here -

 

http://www.dccsupplies.com/shop/product_info.php?products_id=798

[RDS]

@rog (RJ)

That looks just what I need.

Thank you.

 

 

[Rog RJ]

You're welcome.

 

Glad to help.

[RDS]

@rog (RJ)

Just to let you know.

I am very impressed with that place you gave me the link for.

 

Items ordered Sunday afternoon (23rd).

I added to my order by email, yesterday Monday (24th).

All items arrived today (25th).

 

 

[Augustus Caesar]

RDS... Have you managed to do any wiring as yet for these? Just wondering how impressive they would be and how they would work in a loco where the red lights are usually placed beside white on a full size loco like the 125 etc.

 

Curiosity is killing

 

the proverbial cat... any pics when done to be offered up to see how they look?

 

BTW... did you order the 3mm size?

[RDS]

@AugustusCaesar

Sorry, I meant to give some feedback.

Yes I wired up the Bi-Directional LED's as just a temporary job to check that the principle works. It does work and I am very pleased. I was not aware that the real thing has separate side by

 

side lights but to be honest it is not critical to me. I am using the existing lenses, rather than drilling the bodywork and I am very impressed with how the Red or White looks.

 

I don't have any means of providing pictures. How is that done?

 

The

 

LED's are 3mm. I notice that the same supplier also sells some fibre optic strands so I may have a go at experimenting with those in the future but for my 125, I am very satisfied and will just tidy the wiring up and attach the LED somehow.

 

 

[Augustus Caesar]

RDS... to show us pics you can upload them to a freebie site like flickr or something similar. This forum doesn't allow pic uploads unfortunately. If you have your own web host provider you can put them on there too.

 

Once done then just copy and

 

paste your link to said page on here.

 

I'm glad the LED's worked well for you. Mine are showing through the lens too and they are quite impressive to say the least. I am considering the update of a 225 GNER loco and dummy with LED's but will have to

 

drill out the holes for the lights because there is no lens on these locos.

 

If I get round to it I'll take pics and show how it's done.