Athearn DCC board question

[montyvox]

Good afternoon again-

I'm full of questions today.

Does anyone know what DCC board Athearn uses for their SW's or MP15"s?

I have a old blue box SW1500 that I want to add a DCC board too.

I've tried to hot wire it with a wiring harness, but it's not working for some reason.

Thanks
Matt

[Mark R.]

Are you isolating the bottom brush contact from the frame. The bottom brush on the motor is grounded to the frame.

The orange and gray wires from the decoder (harness) need to go to the top and bottom contact strips on the motor. The red wire goes to the top clip on both trucks, and the black wire either grounds to the chassis, or to wires soldered to the opposite half of the trucks metal side plate. Just make sure there's no way the bottom motor clip is making contact with the chassis.


Mark.

[montyvox]

Hey Mark-

I thought I did, it's an older project that I'll be ramping back up. I will check to see.

Thanks for the schematic of the wires from the harness. I have a few spare harnesses and I'll try it again.

Thanks
Matt

[tlbeers]

I will upload a couple of photos on how I wired my. I used a Digitrax N scale and LED lights.

[sd45longhoodfoward]

In my experience the Athearn lightboard also increases the start up and running voltage I guess Athearn uses mini diodes instead of resistors like you use with LED 's