Railpro Controlled by DCC

[Bill]

I thought it might be good to start a thread to solicit experiences operating Railpro decoders from DCC handheld controllers.  My club has MRC Prodigy Advance and we have been unable to control Railpro by DCC.  Has anyone had a similar experience or success with MRC (or any other brand)?

[G8B4Life]

As far as I know MRC Prodigy should be able to control a RailPro LM. I have to ask were the LM's updated to the latest software revision (v2.02) and was DCC mode enabled? It's not automatic and you must enable it you haven't done so. Other than that I can't see why it would not work.

- Tim

[Bill]

Running Lm3s with latest firmware, decoder set to 128 speedstep mode and dcc enabled.  Has it been tested with MRC?  BTW, LOVE the product.  Thanks,  Bill

[William Brillinger]

I think most people here have not used RailPro in DCC mode. Your best bet would be to contact Ring Engineering directly and work through the problem to get it resolved.

[Ken Z]

I just went down and fired up my layout and controlled my Rail Pro as a DCC engine.  I have a DigiTrax system.  I had not tried that so this was a good test for me.

Ken Zieska

[CampbellRice]

I ran LM3s on a DigiTrax system last night and it worked great. Also ran it on a DC layout. It performed beatifully on both layouts!

[William Brillinger]

I ran LM3s on a DigiTrax system last night and it worked great.

Campbell, were you running in DCC mode, or just on a DCC powered layout using your HC to control the locomotive?

[Bill]

So it sounds like Digitrax is covered.  Has anyone tried MRC, NCE, ESU, etc. ?

[CampbellRice]

I ran LM3s on a DigiTrax system last night and it worked great.

Campbell, were you running in DCC mode, or just on a DCC powered layout using your HC to control the locomotive?

I ran it both ways, with my controller and then with a Digitrax controller. It performed beatifully.

[CampbellRice]

Also here is a video I did running on a regular DC layout.

[William Brillinger]

Sweet! Thanks for sharing your video Campbell!

[Bill]

Has anyone tested this running on dcc under MRC?

[MRL Trains]

Just got my first module (LM-3)  installed and had less than an hour to experiment. But I was able to successfully run on NCE throttle and with Engine Driver throttle via JMRI (thru the NCE command station).   

Was NOT able to get it to run in a consist built with the NCE throttle.  Lights responded but no movement. I think I know why but ran out of time. I'll work on it tonight and report back.

 I was able to run in consist with a DCC loco using Engine Driver.  I adjusted RP top speed (using a speedometer) to match my DCC loco and they ran fine together.  One problem I noticed was the RP loco responded to all function commands even thou it was a trail unit. Don't want those lights on.  On DCC decoders you can program locos to ignore function commands when in consist.   It appears RP does this when running as RP (with HC) but not when running as DCC?  Is there something I'm missing?

Best Regards
Chris

[KPack]

Chris - Sounds like we need more testing to determine if RP locos are always responding to functions in a consist.  If so, then it will need to be patched.

I tested on a friend's Digitrax layout yesterday briefly.  Initially I had a hard time getting the DCC controller to recognize the locos, but then I realized my mistake(s).  First, I forgot to "save" the locomotive on the HC after I enabled DCC.  Second, I had the locomotive still pulled up on my HC while trying to access it from the Digitrax controller.  Exiting the locomotive control page solved the issue.  I didn't play much with it after because I only wanted to determine that it would work.  I didn't try consisting with another DCC locomotive, but I'll test that next time.

-Kevin

[MRL Trains]

Well.....I spent my time last night installing my 2nd module (LM-3S) in an older Athearn RTR SD60 that had a WOW decoder.   It was my WOW experimenter to see if I wanted to go down that road. The sound was great but the motor control was awful, especially for consisting. So it was an easy pick for converting to RP. 

Anyway, after installing the LM-3S, I spent the rest of the night testing/playing with RP consisting using the CI-1 and simulator throttle. I had problems getting smooth starts when setup as DPU (One lead loco and 1 pusher behind 15 cars). I would slowly increase the throttle and eventually the loco would "jump" into action. Sometimes the pusher moved first. Other times they would jump at the same time, or the slack would run in and out a few times until they settled on the same speed.   I tried all different settings with Acceleration, Deceleration, and load.  My final conclusion is that the Athearn SD60 needs some work.  It's a real growler so I'm guessing there are some drive train issues. Lots of "stiction" that need to be overcome to start moving.   Tonight I'm going to move the LM-3S into a Proto2000 SD60 (a proven smooth runner) and see if it works better.   The only other thing I could think of is the simulator (rolling the mouse wheel) does not have the fine control the HC has?  I plan to purchase an HC soon but for now it's only the CI-1 and computer.

Hopefully I'll time to run those "DCC functions in consist" tests tonight too. I got too sidetracked last night

Stay tuned!
Chris