Prodigy advance two consisting problems.

[duff man]

I have used this system for around four years now without any real problems, however I have encountered problems trying to double head. My loco's are a selection of  factory fitted, retro fitted, some with sound. All of my loco's work fine as single units and operate happily with up to four operational at any one time including loco's with sound.

My problem is when I create a consit all sorts of things happen. some loco's lights refuse to work, some loco's loose the sound, some locos refuse to move even, sound on a couple of loco's becomes distorted. As a experiment I had six loco's operating at the same time with no issues under there own individual address.

Any thoughts, advice, would be much appreciated.

Craig.

[Nigelcliffe]

What is happening will depend which sort of consist you are using - the "Advanced" consist or the "Universal Old Style".   What they do is different. 

 

 

With an Advanced Consist, you are programming CV19 in each decoder.   And then sending instructions to a single address, the consist address.  Locos respond to that instruction for throttle changes, but how they respond to function keys depends on other settings (below). 

Not all decoders support Advanced Consists, though the better quality sound decoders do support it (ESU, Zimo, D&H, plus most of the US brands of sound decoders).   However, the notes I've checked (JMRI) suggests that Hornby TTS decoders do not support Advanced Consists.    Similarly with non-sound decoders, most decent brands support it, but there will be a few ancient designs that don't.     So, first sub-issue:  if using Advanced Consists, are some of the decoders Hornby ones ? 

 

Within those which support Advanced Consists,  there are other CV's in decoders which determine how function keys respond when they are in an Advanced Consist.  Those include a setting for which function keys respond to the Consist Address, and which respond to the Loco Address (ie. if set to loco address, can individually control functions in that loco, without influencing the other locos).   Those settings affect the control of sound and lights.    How those are set may be different in each loco.  They're typically in CV's 21 and 22, though there is a convention on how they work, some of the fine details vary between decoder makers. 

 

 

With Universal Consists, I'd expect everything to work, as the Prodigy is, in theory, duplicating the instructions to each loco in the consist.  

 

 

 

- Nigel

[duff man]

Nigel

Thanks for your quick and extensive reply, plenty for me to think about and grapple with there.  My decoders are Zimo, esu, lenz,

Don't like Hornby/Bachmann.