RailPro > RailPro Specific Help & Discussion

Broadway Limited Installations?

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swoyekr:
I have a Broadway Limited Reading T1 I'm partial to keeping, however, from what I've read the BLI units can be difficult to install the railpro receiver into. Is this true? Anyone attempt the installation?

Alan:
I have no practical experience with BL and RP however, if you are willing to forgo the factory BL features and make the loco a pure RP installation then it should be no different than any other loco manufacturer - they're all fundamentally wheels, motor, and wires.

TwinStar:
BLI diesel locomotives are crap. Absolute junk. Their DC/DCC electronics are even worse than their models. I have two of them and loath the day I invested as much time and effort as I did working with them. My advice is to remove any electronics that BLI installed and do a clean RailPro install. Sorry for the bad news but that's my experience with them and I still need to disassemble them, again, and mill the frame properly so that they will sit on their trucks level.

swoyekr:
Thanks for the replies, I guess no news is really bad news if you get where you need to go. I have some experience with soldering and splicing but never on a locomotive, just house and automotive. Not sure if I'd have to find a splicing harness to connect into the railpro unit or how that works really... so that I can always change it out later if the railpro thing doesn't stay viable.

Maybe I'll just have to tear her apart and see what's going on in there first, was just hoping someone had some experience before I dropped $400 on the ring setup and tore apart my $450 Loco. It's the only train I run right now, but I'll be expanding into diesel soon enough and the NCE controller I use for DCC is good enough but nowhere near as up-to-date as a railpro setup.

TwinStar:
Make sure you're checking Bill's prices before ordering.

https://www.pdc.ca/rr/catalog/product/harnesses-keep-alives-and-other-accessories/63

Soldering on a loco isn't much different but you'll want to use less heat on the small wires. A small bit of solder on the tip will be good enough. Get some small shrink tube (I think Bill has that too) and connect the dots on the diagram and then plug it in. In all fairness to BLI, I've removed the electronics from every locomotive that I put RailPro in. Most of us are also installing Keep-Alive type capacitors to provide continuous power to the module.

There's a ton of knowledge here and anyone will get smarter by reading the posts here (not mine of course!).

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