Group I have been into DCC for while and I have a Digitrax system at home, and we use a Digitrax systems at the club. I have been watching the Model Railroader Video Plus videos about consisting and advance consisting. Is advance consisting just for locomotives that will constantly run together? I know that when you use Advance Consisting you can use the locomotives separately but also run together. With N scale you can own many locomotives and can be hard to keep track. How do members of this group use Advance Consisting? peace be with you, Arthur
I use the NCE system (Pro Cab) and Advanced Consisting is the default consisting method for that. With NCE, the controller keeps track of the locomotives in the consist and you can call up the consist by selecting either the lead or trailing (last) locomotive. When you do this, the lights and sound will be controlled on the selected locomotive and the consist will move together. This is not necessarily true of advanced consisting on other systems. Selecting locos that run well together is still as important as any other consisting method. This is not true. When part of an advanced consist, the speed and direction will only respond to the consist address. I think that it is easier to break locomotives out of or insert them into an Advanced Consist.
I have a digitrax system at home and my club has two systems there. I use the universal consist method it is easy to add or remove locos from the consist. It does not require a consist number which has to be applied to each loco in the consist. If you want to always keep the same locos MU'ED you can. If I ever lose track of the consisted locos I just use the option switch 39 procedure to clear the memory which will DE'MU all locos in any consist so I can start over whether the locos are on the layout or not. I usually break up my consists regularly as I like to run different models of locos together. I tried using the advanced consist on an mrc system by applying a consist number to a pair my HO locos. They ran fine, but after breaking the consist they do not run well together or individually. I had twelve locos consisted on my clubs N scale layout. When I cleared the memory, all the locos were removed from the consist even though they were not on the layout.
I use the Digitrax Universal consist method, it takes only a minute to make up a consist of three or four locos. My home Digitrax system with battery backup will remember the consist. Breaking up the consist is just as simple.
Digitrax Consisting For Digitrax there are three consisting modes. Simple Advanced Universal Simple is where all locomotives in the consist are given the same address. Most often this would be for something like an ABA or ABBA set of F or E units as an example. Advanced consisting uses a virtual consist address that all of the motor functions are slaved to. Each individual locomotive can still be addressed to change lights and possibly other settings, but so far I have only used lighting functions. Universal consisting is where the command station holds all of the consist information. In this case all the consisting can be done via the throttle on the layout. No need for the programming track. Now for the gotchas! Simple consisting not much only that you have to pre-program the lighting effects because you can not address any specific locomotive in the consist. On the positive side, this counts as one slot on the command station. It does not matter how many locomotives are in the consist. Advanced consisting is similar to simple consisting in that only the virtual address consumes a slot. That is until you address any of the locomotives individually then each locomotive addressed directly consume a slot. So if the consist is 10 locomotives, you may have somewhere between 1 and 10 slots consumed. Also if using Digitrax decoders, make sure to set CV 57 to 102, or once you remove a locomotive from an advanced consist, it will be extremely slow and possibly erratic. Finally, all advanced consists can only have a 2 byte address, addresses lower than 128. Universal consisting chews up the slots, and depending on the model controller you use, this could be important. The Zephyr's have 14 slots, at least the older versions, while the Super Chief has 120. If you ever get the "MAX SLOTS" response on your throttle, it means all the slots are used up and you have to release some of the slots before you can address and control the new locomotive on the layout. If you have JMRI tied into the the layout, then you can easily clear out old slots. Worst case would be to throw optsw 39 and essentially reset the slot count by releasing all the slots. It can get a little more complicated especially if there are sound decoders involved, the simple motion only decoders follow the above.
Hi Arthur, I prefer Advanced consisting but have only lately been using it on a Digitrax system at the group show set ups a few times per year. Otherwise I have had an NCE system for 10 years and like the way NCE uses the front or back loco address to control the entire consist. I have not dug into it much but have set up and run some nice consists using the Digitrax Advanced Consisting. It does require a bit more programming so only certain functions respond to the consist address using CV's 21 and 22. Also as David suggested put CV57 to 102. That is a topic within itself. I have been told by an individual that OpSw17 within a Digitrax command station should be turned off or closed. It has to do with auto advanced consisting when Digitrax decoders are detected and can cause mixed decoder consists to run erratic. Any thoughts on that one?
CV 57 to 102 comes straight from Digitrax. I had this happen on numerous locomotives as I took them out of consists. This was their solution, and it works. Never had any issues with Opsw17 thrown or closed.
Hmm, interesting. This is simply setting the speed stabilization for both advanced consisted and non-consisted to "6" (102 in hex is x66), versus the recommended (per manual) starting value of 5. This makes sense, in that you want the loco to act the same in both situations and they've probably just found "6" works better than "5".
Digitrax support gave me this solution when I had a problem with a consist including both NCE and Digitrax decoders. No matter how I set the direction of the locos in the consist, one or two would run contrary. I assume this is one thing that's meant by unpredictable performance. CV 57 to 102 on the Digitrax decoders in the consist fixed it.
