# DCC on board ?



## trnfn69 (Jan 21, 2012)

Might be a silly question, but here goes. Does anyone here know on the bachmann on board loco's if the decoders are all the same from bachmann? 1is a gp 30, 1 is a gp 40 and the other 2 are emd sd40-2's.


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## NIMT (Jan 6, 2011)

Bachmann changes there decoders all around, some times even within the same production run, so it would be hard to give an exact answer.
Bachmann DCC decoders are also the lowest on the sale of quality, I am contantly changing them out for better decoders!
Why do you need to know?


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## trnfn69 (Jan 21, 2012)

1st reason would be to know if setting the cv values would be anywhere in the same range when I get my layout finallized and start building it. 2nd would be if I wanted to run in a consist for smooth operating. Was also wondering if changing all loco's to the same decoders at some point would make programming easier down the road? I also have 2 atlas master series loco's and 2 athearn blue box loco's 1 qiuck plug equipped and 1 will need a full dcc conversion.


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## NIMT (Jan 6, 2011)

In order to match them to MU or Consist equally you will need to speed match them, no matter which decoders you use, that is done with the speed tables in CV's 67-94. 
Using the same decoders in different engines they will still run differently.
You'll never be able to get all the same decoder in every kind of engine.
If you want to make programing, speed matching and inventory easy, get a Digitrax PR3 computer interface and JMRI's decoder pro (Free) and it will make it a lot easier!


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## JohnAP (May 4, 2011)

Sean,

How dificult is it to machine the frame of an older blue box Kato loco for a modern DCC board? N scale.


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## NIMT (Jan 6, 2011)

For me not hard at all, about an hour maybe less. 
I've done several over the years, so I've gotten some practice.
I use a combination of tools to do it, I wanted to get a mill for doing them, just never got one!


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