I have been reading this board for some time now and it has been very informative. While I am waiting to build a layout in my basement til after I get it fixed up a bit I have been working on improving my collection of equipment. Adding decoders to my loco's and changing wheel sets on the rolling stock with FVM sets. Which brings me to my questions. I have read the thread on how to figure out the correct wheel size for freight cars but am stumped by the Bluford 86 footers I just started on. The weights all add up to random numbers that vary between 219K up to 263K. So are 33" wheels correct for all these cars or should some have 36" wheels? And my second completely unrelated question is about the Kato GS-4. I can't get it to run with the decoder in it. DC it works no problem, took it to the local shop to make sure it had the DCC mod and it does. So has anyone else had problems getting the Kato decoder to work in this thing and what did you do to fix it?
Welcome to TrainBoard, good to have you on board. From Central Ohio, I see. I enjoyed my time in Ohio, although it didn't last long enough. PowerSteamGuy1790/Bob, has answered this question about the GS4 Decoder a number of times. A google search would most likely help you locate his website. I will try a brief search and hopefully get back to you with his blog or website address. Wheel sizes. I seem to have better luck with the 36" wheels size when replacing various wheel sets. However, I generally follow the policy of replacing wheels with like size wheels. Edited add on: N Scale Talk -> Just received the Kato GS-4 Not knowing for sure what the problem is I can only hope this answers your question and helps you get your GS4 back up and running. On the other hand...this sounds like it could be a programming thing.
flyboy: Welcome to TB forum. Is the GS-4 that you have a "first production run" from kato> If it is you need to install Kato's "fix" to prevent the drivers from shorting out on the frame and destroying your Kato EM-13 decoder. You can get the necessary "fix" by calling Kato USA. It looks like your decoder has already gone up in "smoke".
I took the GS-4 to the local hobby shop to see if they could install the Kato shims so that it would work with DCC. They looked at it and said that they were already there. They showed me too, and now that I know what I am looking for they are easily spotted between the drivers. So this one is not from the first batch that had issues. It doesn't do anything with the decoder installed and when trying to program it the system (NCE) goes into page mode. Didn't know if anybody else had any problems with the later runs working with DCC or if I might have gotten a bad decoder. Thanks for the help! Geoff
