Just saw over on the Athearn site a new run of the N Scale 2-6-0 is expected soon!! Along with the 2-6-0 are some new N Scale 50' Overland coaches in matching paint. I'm going to have to get that early daylight consist for Thunder Ridge!
Just wondering how easy it is to convert this little engine to a DCC, does the motor need to be isolated?
Unless thet have changed the design, it is doable, but it is kind of a chore. their isn't much room in the tender. I ended up replacing the tender all together to represent one later in it's life. But I did DCC the old tender first, basicly, you gotta raise the coal bunker, and add "hungry boards" to it to make room for the decoder. I didn't wire in the headlight, so it stays on constantly. Isolating the motor is pretty strait forward from what I remember, but I can't remember exactly what it took, I wanna say it was unsoldering one wire, and isolating the motor from the frame with Kapton tape.
I discovered that there are already a few different designs for tender pickup with the older Roundhouse releases. Generally the motor is pretty well isolated, just cut the connection to the pickups and insert the decoder. I helped another member with one of these and instead of building up the load of coal/wood in the tender, I simply added a styrene gasket between the metal shell and frame of the tender. This lifted the entire shell to create room for the decoder without any destructive modification. Even still, the smaller the decoder the better. Perhaps we RBrodzinsky to share a photo of it. Depending on the design of the drawbar, power transfer from the engine to the tender motor can be quite poor. However there are two screws beneath the cab that hold the cab to the frame. Pinch a small wire between the screw and frame, then attach it to the tender (methods vary depending on design), and then you have better pickups.
I used an M1 decoder in mine and had to raise the sides on the tender. However the new Z2 just might fit with no modifications.
I dont know how but there is a guy on youtube that got a soundtraxx tsu-750 in an athearn 2-8-0 and that has about the same amount of room in it, here is the link http://youtu.be/3l5TeGleYbY
