Shorting plugs...

shaygetz

Active Member
I am in the process of DE-decodering most of my locomotives as the price of decoders and the size of my fleet, both aquired and anticipated, make it a budgetary problem I'd rather not deal with right now. My new layout will be DC only, the practical reasons being 1.) The expense of the size unit necessary to handle the size layout I am building and 2.) The number of locomotives I won't be able to run because of the limitations and drawbacks of running "00" channel.

Obviously, as old as some members of my locomotive roster are and the sometimes innovative and ingenious ways ( pause to pat myself on the back ;) ) it took to install decoders in them, I don't want to undo them. What I need is a source for this type of shorting chip that fits onto Lenz and Digitrax 9 pin harnesses, either from you folks who may have a couple lying around the workbench or a retailer online who may carry them. I need three or four of them and any help would be greatly appreciated.
 

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MasonJar

It's not rocket surgery
Not overly familiar with them, but both my Proto2000 and Bachmann Spectrum engines came with a simple plug tht you pulled out to put in the decoder... Is this similar? We have a guy at the modular club who makes up all kinds of harnesses and so on for installing decoders. I'll have to ask where he gets his parts - maybe you can make up a few of your own?

Andrew

PS - How about the manufacturer?
 

shaygetz

Active Member
MasonJar said:
Not overly familiar with them, but both my Proto2000 and Bachmann Spectrum engines came with a simple plug tht you pulled out to put in the decoder... Is this similar? We have a guy at the modular club who makes up all kinds of harnesses and so on for installing decoders. I'll have to ask where he gets his parts - maybe you can make up a few of your own?

Andrew

PS - How about the manufacturer?

That would be the 8 pin plug that Bachmann uses. It can easily be made with some printed circuit board and short lengths of brass wire. The pictured one comes in more recent release locomotives; Atlas or one of them, though I don't know which. It has some ICs in it that may help with the "00" dance so common with decoderless locos and definately is beyond anything I can crank out in my shop. I'm hoping to be able to add DCC to my layout in the future so I don't want to just rip out hours of work. I don't imagine there's much of a market for backing out of DCC gracefully :)
 
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