BLI Blue Line F7-A Installation Question

[nodcc4me]

Has anyone done one of these? I am considering getting one, and wondering if there is enough room for a LM. Blue Line models already have a speaker installed.

[TwinStar]

Al:

I installed in a BLI EB-7 and an E-8 but nothing smaller from them.

[nodcc4me]

Jacob, did you have to remove the board and hard wire it or were you able to use the 8-pin plug?

[TwinStar]

On the E8 I removed everything except the nose LED light board. I thought I had a thread here mapping that board as to which pad went to which light but I can find it right now. This is an LM-2S install with a Bridge Rectifier, KA-3, and two iPhone speakers.

Outside of the RailPro install I also replaced the BLI motor with a Kato and used NWSL drive components. You may want to look at the couplers as well. They were 0.040" too high and had to be shimmed lower. I don't know about their F units but they may have copied and pasted some elements in CAD.

[William Brillinger]

Jacob, you have a post on the Proto 2000 EA-7 here: https://rpug.pdc.ca/index.php/topic,69.0.html

[TwinStar]

Jacob, you have a post on the Proto 2000 EA-7 here: https://rpug.pdc.ca/index.php/topic,69.0.html

So I’m not crazy. Just confused!

[nodcc4me]

Thanks guys. I'm sure that will be useful. 

[Coupe633]

My recent decision to make the jump from all DC to RailPro has prompted a lot of questions for me to consider before I have even made my first RailPro Purchase. I have a number of BLI Blue Line loco's and one Paragon Loco that will probably be my first to be converted by the end of the year since they seem to be the easier of the 45 locos I have from various manufacturers and geological time periods. I have a considerable number of Atlas (Yellow box) locos from the mid 70's to early 80's that will need to be completely reworked for lighting and sound in order to gain the full advantage of the LM-3S. Any comments, experience, suggestions would be appreciated for my older Atlas locos but I'm thinking e-bay or a local train show. With the BLI Blue Line locos it seems that they are going to be fairly easy to add the LM-3S. Is there any advantage or disadvantage other than the price factor, purchasing future BLI with QSI sound or the newer Rolling Thunder Sound since the LM-3S will be the modules I use? I have not opened any of my BLI locomotives up to see what they look like under the shell but I know they have at least a speaker in them which should make installing the LM-3S much easier. Also I do have one BLI "Stealth" F7B which "Sounds" like it would not contain a speaker. Is this correct?

[G8B4Life]

I don't have any Altas so I can't answer that part but I do have a BLI loco which I have not converted (and probably never will). With BLI's QSI  / Paragon 2 / Paragon 3 you need need to remove the built in DCC decoder which also is the main circuit board for the whole locomotive and hard wire; there was no consideration given by BLI for simple decoder swapping, at least for the Paragon 2 series..

BLI Blueline, from memory contains a built in sound only module but no built in decoder. When you add a DCC decoder to a Blueline you'd normally just add a non sound decoder (8 pin I think) so that the DCC decoder handles all the DCC stuff and the built in module does the sound. If you wanted to put in a proper sound decoder you'd need to remove BLI's built in sound module and hard wire.

Stealth I do not know if they contain a speaker or not but they are non sound non DCC so it could be the easiest to start with.

So, there will not be any advantage to buying future BLI with QSI / Paragon 2 / Paragon 3, in fact it'd be more expensive as your paying for the BLI decoder that your not going to use, though you probably won't have choice as they no longer do Blueline or Stealth as far as I know. Unfortunately this seems to be the way the industry is heading - offering everything DCC installed already and too bad if you need to waste your money on a pre-installed decoder you don't want because you want a different decoder in the model.

- Tim

[Coupe633]

I don't have any Altas so I can't answer that part but I do have a BLI loco which I have not converted (and probably never will). With BLI's QSI  / Paragon 2 / Paragon 3 you need need to remove the built in DCC decoder which also is the main circuit board for the whole locomotive and hard wire; there was no consideration given by BLI for simple decoder swapping, at least for the Paragon 2 series..

BLI Blueline, from memory contains a built in sound only module but no built in decoder. When you add a DCC decoder to a Blueline you'd normally just add a non sound decoder (8 pin I think) so that the DCC decoder handles all the DCC stuff and the built in module does the sound. If you wanted to put in a proper sound decoder you'd need to remove BLI's built in sound module and hard wire.

Stealth I do not know if they contain a speaker or not but they are non sound non DCC so it could be the easiest to start with.



So, there will not be any advantage to buying future BLI with QSI / Paragon 2 / Paragon 3, in fact it'd be more expensive as your paying for the BLI decoder that your not going to use, though you probably won't have choice as they no longer do Blueline or Stealth as far as I know. Unfortunately this seems to be the way the industry is heading - offering everything DCC installed already and too bad if you need to waste your money on a pre-installed decoder you don't want because you want a different decoder in the model.

- Tim

Thanks Tim for the info. I suspected this would be the case and it does seem that everything is going in the direction of forcing the customer to buy the manufacturers model with the decoder as well. I don't see much point in paying $300+ for a locomotive and then trying to rip out and throw away the decoder especially if it is hardwired in. Fortunately I already have a lot of locomotives but many are pre-90's locomotives and I have to make a decision on replacing them. DCC ready with a speaker is ideal but as you say, manufacturers are moving away from that. Once I get my locomotives out of storage I can pull the shells off of them and assess the situation as to whether it will be feasible to 1) enhance the lighting, 2) add sound, 3) make room for the RailPro module (with or without sound). I do know how to use a soldering iron.