Yes, the issue is that track power can be either polarity. The 57079 board will take the track power, no matter which polarity, and GUARANTEE that positive and negative are on that red and black pair, as you see in the near side of the picture... that is the "output"... that goes to the battery input on your drop in. The track pickup wires go to the "input" side of that board, which appears to be 2 black wires. the two at the "top" of your picture. Which one does not matter. This is needed for track power because you can have either polarity on the rails, BUT the AirWire MUST always have positive and negative on the indicated "battery" input. Once connected, the battery polarity cannot change, but track power polarity can change. Hope this explains it well enough. Be sure when connecting to the track pickups, you reverse the front and back wires, since the trucks are reversed from each other, once you plug into the track pickups for the front and rear, you will have 2 pairs, but you connect the red from the front to the black from rear and vice versa. Please take a picture of this part BEFORE you apply power... otherwise you wind up putting a short through the motor blocks and burn up the internal pickup wires. (don't ask me how I know this)... I cannot emphasize this enough. Greg p.s. I hear you on getting response from the manufacturers, I looked at the AirWire forum, hardly any posts in years. But, this is the cool thing about the hobby, people helping each other.
So, a pair of reverse loops will not be a problem? Have a reverse loop in back, and a wye in front. Want to find an automatic reverse loop control. So I do NOT have to walk to the back every time I wish to run a train that way! I also see that a smoke unit can be run, from drop in. Can I replace the smoke unit, with a small fan or two instead? Would like to do that, for venting when running, to prevent thermal shut down, while running in direct sun, and high heat! Anyway, need to concentrate on getting the unit(s) running first! Thanks.
The Massoth unit will do autoreverse on analog DC, needs some short gapped rails to sense this. Works well. Yes, what I would recommend is running fan all the time, but not full speed... often a 24v dc fan does a great job on 12 to 14v input. What's also important is vents in the shell up high and down low... Greg
Wired everything as you stated. Made sure I totally disconnected the Phoenix board. Crossed power pick ups, as stated. Connected Black 57079 input wires to track power. Connected red-red, black-black output wires, to battery plug and connected. Tried using MRC Control Master 20 for testing, since it was right there! With everything wired as stated, I applied low power. The 57079 board got extremely hot, is all that happened. Nothing else happened. Board got hot, even at less than half throttle! Have everything sitting right now. Have given up on it. Guess I'm gonna have to resort to running these on DC power only, and not be able to run the, to the back yard and return! Chalking this up as a VERY expensive mistake!! Was over $1'300 that could have been used elsewhere! At this point, I quit!! Until, or IF I can get correct installation information, that's gonna work!
Well, something is fishy... that 57079 board has 3 black wires, make sure you connected the track pickups to the 2 black wires that are at the top left... not the plus and minus wires at the bottom in your picture. The instructions I have given you are correct, sorry, but you have made a mistake somewhere, so let's go step by step. Hook up the track pickups to the 57079 as above, nothing else, leave the red and black wire pair not connected to anything... try the low power again... if you get heat, the board is damaged. If no heat, hook a voltmeter to the red and black wires and try it out, you should get track voltage and the polarity should never change even with you changing the power direction switch. Try this first... step by step... you won't learn by giving up or having someone else do it. You can do this... Greg
I know what I did, and I did NOT connect anything wrong. Everything was hooked up, as you stated. It failed. So far, nothing has worked. I'm having an extremely hard time finding the proper instructions for track pick up! Had I known there was gonna be this much trouble to install, I'd have probably never done it. I'm finding it's NOT worth the time and trouble if it doesn't work. And the poorly done instructions don't help! If this doesn't work, I quit. Parts will be kept as reminder of the over $1'300 mistake that was made!
if the bridge rectifier heated up, either there is a short circuit on the output of it, or it is damaged... really nothing to do with the track pickups. If you did not connect the track pickups together right, you would have had a short before the rectifier, and the rectifier would not have heated. Trust me, don't take this personally, let's just get through it. Take a picture of the wires, so i can see the track pickups and the connection to the 57079... Verify that the cables between the 57079 and the track pickup connectors go to the 2 connectors that have 4 wires each (to 2 pins). Greg
Ordered a batch of male/female plugs, so I could complete the install. When I went back and checked things out, that's when I noticed the battery plug wires were reversed, from what I ordered. Soldered in a new plug, and started testing again. This time, I started with track power only. No shorts, no rectifier heat. Unplugged motors, plugged in battery, tried again. No short, no heat and of course, no movement! Plugged in motors and lights and tried again. No shorts, no heat, lights and movement! Lastly, plugged in sound card and tried again. Lights on card lit, and it came to life! Success. Then, just need to change address(es) and adjust start speed. All of the trouble, because one plug was wrong! So, as of now, I have sound and movement. Gotta try outside, where I have more space to run, to check things out more! So far, so good. Feeling a bit better now. Just gotta watch the plugs on the other 2 units, when I get to them! Calling it quits for the night.
Good! Persistence pays off! Yeah, I can tell you stories not only about inconsistencies of plug wiring, but one year, apparently Aristo ran out of black wire, so the black wires were actually red wires with paint on them. Very shortly after being delivered, the black paint flaked off and you had a loco full of nothing but red wires. Greg
Now have 2 units wired and running! Just did a bit of experimenting. Tried using a CVP T9000 throttle, to test locomotives, and attempt to change address to cab number. It worked! And NO delay, when changing directions, where the NCE G Wire caused a delay! I'll use the G Wir then, on the GP40's, since I have no problems there. And use the T9000 on the GP30's. Just one more locomotive to convert. But, I gotta get 2-3 stripped screws out as I take the body off!! Interestingly, only 1 drop in board has a correct power plug! I don't have to change it! May start trying to get things apart later. Gonna experiment with the GP30's for a bit. Before it rains, as the news is claiming it might.
Did final RC/Sound install today. With another problem!! This time, sound does NOT work! RC and lighting works. Think the cable between the drop in board and sound board, and sound board to speaker, is bad. This was the wires from last unit done, swapped it with another and it worked. This one does not. So now, I gotta fight for getting the necessary wires, to complete the install. Gonna have to look into the CD and programming plug next. Need to look at an easy way to speed match the locomotives! Have the Rio Grande and one Burlington fairly close, but still off a hair! Edit: The wire fight was short lived! Solved the problem, by switching the Sound switch under the locomotive to the ON position! Applied power, and it worked! Just wasn't paying attention to the slide switches. My own mistake!
The CVP decoder in your drop in has the normal NMRA start and max CV's and the optional midpoint speed CV. Normally between these 3 you can speed match pretty well. It also supports the NMRA custom speed table. You should be able to match exactly if you want. Greg
Did a quick reset of CV 2 of the offending locomotive. Got everything to match up almost perfectly now! I'm finding, at the time, that Speed Step 2 works the best. If I set all 3 units to SS 3, they don't seem to run well together. Still experimenting though.just happy I'm able to get them to run as a consisted set! Hoping to try again before long, IF we don't get another severe thunderstorm as we did yesterday! Decided to call it quits, because wind was picking up pretty good. Just after I finished getting stuff in, we got hit with a severe thunderstorm! Lasted about 20 minutes. Will keep messing with things a bit, trying to figure it out. So far, so good.
Yeah, the rule of thumb is set each loco to just start to crawl with CV2, then use CV5 to match speeds, and CV6 if the speeds are off mid range. Greg
