Hornby Fowelr 4P & 36-553 decoder - settings?

[Alex TM]

Hi everyone,

 

If all goes to plan this weekend I will be chipping the last of my locos.  I have found alternate CV settings to fine tune all but one of them; can anyone help?

 

Locomotive is a Hornby Fowler 4P 2-6-4t;

decoder is a Bachmann 36-553

 

As ever, thanks in advance for any help offered.

 

Regards,

 

Alex.

[WIMorrison]

Tried thgis web page?

 

http://service.Bachmann.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/decoder_settings.pdf

[Alex TM]

Hi Iain,

 

Thanks again for posting the link

 

Yes, it came in really useful for transforming my Std. 3 tank.  I was led to believe that the settings would be different for a Hornby loco (different motor, no flywheels, lighter chassis, etc).  As I am very new to programming CVs, etc, I thought it wiser to ask before spending a lot of time fiddling about with settings without fully knowing what I am doing.

 

Regards,

 

Alex.

[WIMorrison]

My experience would suggest that you can have 2 identical locos with identical chips running on the same layout with the same controller and the CV settings to make them run the same can (and normally are) completely different

 

I was helping a friend speed profile his locos the other week (he is also new to this) and 3 identical locos all required different starting steps, midpoints and top speed. In the end I created custom curves using DecoderPro (free ) for all to make them run the same enabling them to be part of a consist.

[Trains4U]

Hornby locos can be a bit jittery with Bachmann decoders - you need to play with the feedback/Back EMF CVs (54 and 55) to get them running smoothly.    lower values in CV 54 and higher values in CV 55 will help as it stops the decoder from sending the surges of power required to kickstart a flywheel fitted motor.

[Alex TM]

Hi again,

 

Iain:

Thanks for the lead on DecoderPro - I'll look it up.

 

Gareth:

Will look into those values.  Changing these with the 3MT transformed it from rough into one of the smoothest, and slowest, runners I have.

 

Thanks and regards,

 

Alex.

[WIMorrison]

DecoderPro can be a bit of headache to start with (as can all things JMRI) but I find it very valuable for setting CVs, especially as it gives you a library of each loco saving the effort of having to write it all down

 

http://jmri.org/help/en/html/apps/DecoderPro/index.shtml

[Butler Henderson]

Never had much success with 36-553s in Hornby steam locos; as has been posted elsewhere they are usually fine in diesels so if you have a diesel with a, for example, Lenz decoder in it a swop of decoders is possibly the simplest resolution.

Edited August 31, 2018 by Butler Henderson