{"id":848,"date":"2016-03-20T22:15:53","date_gmt":"2016-03-21T03:15:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lacentralrr.com\/Blog\/?p=848"},"modified":"2019-01-30T18:45:56","modified_gmt":"2019-01-31T00:45:56","slug":"trains-are-running-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lacentralrr.com\/Blog\/2016\/03\/20\/trains-are-running-again\/","title":{"rendered":"Trains are Running Again"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve been working and playing with my new NCE “Hybrid” DCC system<\/a> for a couple days now, and things seem to be running smoothly.\u00a0 The installation was mostly straightforward, with a few glitches in figuring out the polarity of certain wires and connections between NCE and my existing Lenz equipment.\u00a0 The power input, and the track and cab buses were literally a simple plug-in and all worked fine.\u00a0 The biggest challenge was hooking the control bus from the Lenz boosters to the NCE command station.\u00a0 Lenz uses the Euro style wire connectors for everything, whereas the NCE uses that style for just the power input and track outputs.\u00a0 The NCE box utilizes a telephone type plug for the control bus, so I had to figure a way to go from a twisted single pair cable to that telephone connector.\u00a0 I had an old telephone out in the garage that I had retired probably 20 years ago, so I took the receiver jack out of its base (with wires attached) and I secured it to the backboard at my controls area.\u00a0 I already had a barrier strip there where the control bus terminated, so I soldered a couple spade lugs to the appropriate pair of the jack’s wires, and simply attached them to that barrier strip.\u00a0 Then I was able to use the telephone handset cord to plug the NCE box into that jack, and -voila!- I had signal on the bus.\u00a0 Today I finished off the installation by hooking my computer up to the NCE box, and then cranking up DecoderPro.\u00a0 After doing the configuration for NCE, I was up and running.\u00a0 Other than a little tidy-up work, I’m done with the new installation.<\/p>\n

In my last post I neglected to mention the other<\/em> big reason I became disillusioned with my Lenz system.\u00a0 My favorite thing about the Lenz was that LH90 throttle with the big knob.\u00a0 The thing I liked the least about the system was that LH90 throttle with the big knob.\u00a0 Huh?\u00a0 How’s that<\/em> you say?\u00a0 Well, the LH90 throttle doesn’t have a full keypad.\u00a0 It can only access five functions directly (that is, with a single key press).\u00a0 Getting to higher functions (up to function 8) requires pressing a shift button before pressing the desired function.\u00a0 Getting to functions up to 28 requires as many as a dozen button presses!\u00a0 With my earlier decoders, this wasn’t any particular problem.\u00a0 But with the advent of sound decoders, that shortcoming was quite disappointing.\u00a0 I generally need between eight and ten “instant” function buttons to set things up the way I prefer . . . easy to do with a full keypad.\u00a0 Even the small NCE throttles I have satisfy that requirement.<\/p>\n

And last, I failed to mention the fast and convenient service Art Houston (my NCE dealer) provided when I called to order the system.\u00a0 Thanks, Art!<\/p>\n

Can’t wait to get back out in the train room tomorrow to run some trains!<\/p>\n

-Jack<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve been working and playing with my new NCE “Hybrid” DCC system for a couple days now, and things seem to be running smoothly.\u00a0 The installation was mostly straightforward, with a few glitches in figuring out the polarity of certain … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-848","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-electrical-dcc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lacentralrr.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/848","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lacentralrr.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lacentralrr.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lacentralrr.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lacentralrr.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=848"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.lacentralrr.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/848\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1488,"href":"https:\/\/www.lacentralrr.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/848\/revisions\/1488"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lacentralrr.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lacentralrr.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lacentralrr.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}