Rapido Dash 8 and NCE Power Cab's

New Power on the WRD.

This week my Rapido Dash 8 No. 2422 arrived via Peter. This is for my summer operations and I have been toying with purchasing some of the engines that I worked on. When I got a chance I tried the Dash 8 out. Well everything was going wonky. F8 which normally turns on the sound was giving me the doppler effect. The engine would not move although revved up when the headlights was turned on. It ran fine without the sound on unless you turned on the headlights.

Peter and I visited Jeff in St. Thomas who owns Railway City Hobbies and is really good with DCC. Well the engine ran perfectly on his test track and the files seemed to be perfect. While we discussed what was happening on the WRD Jeff mentioned that older NCE Power Cab might need updating for use with current Loksound decoders. So off we went to try it out once again at home. I do have two NCE units, one for the WRD and a newer unit on my narrow gauge module. I tried the newer unit and it works perfectly. I looked up the manuals to get the dates they were published. The unit that is wonky is Rev. 1.1 dated 2004. The newer unit which worked fine with the Rapido unit is Rev. 1.65 dated 2012. I hope this information helps anyone who is using NCE...George Dutka

Forgot to mention I will be away so no post tomorrow...the reason for a second one today.