Last might I had a couple of my friends over to run trains, since I'm not going to be around for a couple weeks. I invited my two senior layout operators, NJ John and Norman the official APRR event photographer. NJ John brought over a set of Amtrak Phase I Metroliners to test run.
The night started out just fine, until NJ John put the last Metroliner car on the layout, #822, a DCC sound equipped coach. For reasons which we figured out later, he couldn't get it to run as it was showing in consist. In the world of DCC, units in consist usually have 2 or more engines made to run at the same time. Now NJ John is our resident DCC guy for our group, but this on puzzled him. So, what do most of us do when we can't get something to work the way we want it to? We hit all the buttons at random! Meanwhile, I went to move a train, and I couldn't, as it only showed the loco number and not in consist. Then I went to browse my consists on my NCE ProCab and ALL of my consists were gone! Whatever NJ John did, he wiped out all of my consists in the system. How did this happen? It turns out I had an Amtrak P42 engine with #822 on it. While it was on a track with no power, it was in a consist in the system. We realized why, and after we got the Metroliners to run, they helped me re-consist all of the sets of engines paired up.
They do look nice and run well. Walthers made them with just one powered truck in each car. No dummy units were made by them. You could buy DC / DCC Ready or DCC with sound, which can run on DC.
A little railfanning for your enjoyment!
A run by near Rock Ridge Yard
Metroliners thru the Amtrak Station
A little view at night!
The night was enjoyable! Thanks for reading!
The easy way to fix a loco that's in consist is to program on main, select the loco, and set CV 19 to 0. Consists are hard to keep track of, and it's very easy to clear the consist while one or more locos is on a dead track, which leads to that kind of problem. JMRI has a consist number in the roster entry, but it doesn't coordinate with what's in the DCC system.
ReplyDeleteThis was not the issue. He actually cleared all of the consists in my system. He's very good with DCC. My consists are in plain view and since I have about 20 of them, it was easy to rebuild. The Metroliners that come with DCC & Sound have so many features that units with DCC only need to be remapped to coordinate with the proper way they light. He did it and as you saw in the videos ran well.
DeleteThanks for sharing the Amtrak action Sir Neal! Very impressive seeing the Metro Liners in day and night operation
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