Trying to find locos with quick plug

[Edavis]

I think I want to learn how to hard wire locomotives sooner than planned do to the fact that trying to findout if they have a plug is way harder than it seems like it should be.maybe I just don't know what lam doing lol.if anyone can give me some advice I would appreciate it

[William Brillinger]

We'd love to help you out, but we need more information. Please tell us what models you want to install in and if possible provide some pictures of the guts of the units.

[Edavis]

I'm modeling modern diesel bnsf,believe it or not I'll have to have my son maybe show me how to get you some pics of the locos. I can tell you all the wires in these are black with a board,one is a Walthers main line that has a speaker that works on dc and the other is a athearn genesis that I picked up at the train show,that I was told had a quick plug.ill try to get some pics of them.thx again

[William Brillinger]

I'm not sure about the Walthers, but if the Athearn is a DCC ready unit, it will have a quick plug. If it's a DCC unit, it might not.

Check out the Installation board for some examples to see how some other units have been done.
https://rpug.pdc.ca/index.php/board,2.0.html

Here is a link to my thread on installing an LM into an Athearn Genesis DCC Ready GP38-2W...
https://rpug.pdc.ca/index.php/topic,74.0.html

[nodcc4me]

You may have to remove one or more of those boards and hard wire the module in order to fit a speaker in. Unfortunately, locomotive manufacturers don't always follow NMRA wire color coding rules, so if there is no 8 or 9 pin socket/plug you will have to do resistance testing to find out which wires go where. Hard wiring a module is not that difficult after you have done a couple. You can also call the company and ask for a wiring diagram. Another source of information is Tony's Trains. They have many illustrated instructions for adding DCC decoders to locomotives. RailPro follows the same guidelines. Of course, we are here to help, and pictures would be helpful.

[Edavis]

Ok here's what iam looking at guess all the wires aren't black.

[Edavis]

Don't know what can be seen but here we go

[William Brillinger]

who is the manufacturer of these models?

[Edavis]

Oh sorry,the bnsf is athearn genisis and the ns is a Walthers mainline that has sound on dc running

[nodcc4me]

I don't see an 8 pin socket on either one. If that's the case, they would have to be hard wired.

[Edavis]

Ya gotta try to figure out how to do the hard wire

[William Brillinger]

Here is a video that shows some of the common things to look for when hardwiring: (DCC in this case)

For your units, I would remove the circuit boards and hardwire it up.
You will need a WH-9 Wiring harness.
There is a wiring diagram on the paper that came with your LM.

Identify the wires going to the trucks. Bring these wires to the RED and BLACK Wires on the WH-9
Identify the wires going to the Motor. Bring these wires to the GRAY and ORANGE Wires on the WH-9

The rest of the wires are for lights and possibly a speaker if it is already present.

Connect the speaker to the brown wires on the 6 pin harness.

For the lights, if they are LED's you will need some resistors. You can wire the lights later if you like.

Look over these threads for some good nuggets of advice:

https://rpug.pdc.ca/index.php/topic,270.0.html
https://rpug.pdc.ca/index.php/topic,202.0.html
https://rpug.pdc.ca/index.php/topic,185.0.html
https://rpug.pdc.ca/index.php/topic,266.0.html

Kevin boils the process down well here:

On nearly all my installs I mount the module right to the top of the motor, then trim all the wires to length, strip and tin the ends of the wires, solder everything, and finally protect the joints with shrink tube.

-Kevin

You don't need a very fancy soldering iron, but some lead free solder paste, fine solder for electronics, a decent stripper for small wires, and some very small heat shrink tube will be needed.

[Edavis]

Thanks bill as soon as I get around to ordering the harness I am going to give this a go.thanks again

[William Brillinger]

Hopefully we can get some of Kevin's install photos back up on the group and they will help too.

Here's one, of a deadrail install: https://rpug.pdc.ca/index.php/topic,345.msg2499.html

[KPack]

Hopefully we can get some of Kevin's install photos back up on the group and they will help too.

Working on it.  I need to go back through and figure out which pictures go where.

Better yet, I'd like to make a video on how to hardwire a 9-pin harness.  With any luck I might be able to record that this week and have it edited and up in the next couple weeks.  I have a new ScaleTrains ET44 that needs all the factory stuff removed.

-Kevin