FullSteamAhead

Firstly, many thanks to the very helpful team at Youchoos who spent time investigating this for me, and eventually offered the following explanation (which I hope I'm carrying forwards correctly). It seems there is a 'convention' (as opposed to a 'standard') that Consist construct instructions are sent out three times. However, not all controllers do (it's suspected NCE Powercab and Lenz don't), and some decoders look for three instructions while others are happy receiving just one. Apparently Zimo are sitting on the fence with this issue, with their MX decoders happy to have one instruction, while their MS series wait for three. So for now, apart from setting CV19 manually, it seems I'm scuppered unless Zimo decide to relax the requirement for three in a future software release. Hope this helps anyone else confounded by Consist Join issues and thank you again everyone who pitched in with suggestions. If nothing else it's been a useful learning experience!

Well, sadly none of the suggestions has helped so still have the same problem, but thank you nontheless to those who've tried to help here. Have also tried renumbering my locos from 'long' 4-digit numbers to 'short' 1-digit numbers but no change. Also, have noticed that having added the locos to a consist manually (i.e. construct the consist then change loco CV19 to consist address) I need to repeat the process to get them out of a consist. i.e. I can kill my consist - but their CV19 still holds the consist address until I manually set it to zero. Needless to say CV19 won't be getting a Christmas card from me this year!! I've now referred the issue back to my decoder supplier hoping they can help, although have seen nothing on the ZIMO website to suggest this is a known issue.... Onwards and upwards 😀

Thanks all - plenty to try tonight!

Thanks for help - Offending decoders are Zimo MS480R and Zimo MS490R, both 'current' production items as I understand things so I would hope they both understand 'Advanced' Consist construction. To date Consist construction has been made on my Mainline environment - I'll give construction on the Programming track a go.

Hi all - relatively new to DCC here and have come up with a wierd issue when constructing Consists. I use the NCE Powercab, and am at the stage of experimenting with assembly 'basic' 2-loco "Adanced" Consists with address 127. All goes as planned for most of my fleet, but I have two locos that do not pick up the command to join a Consist i.e. once added to the Consist construction they do not respond to Consist commands. Poking about shows their CV19 does not hold the Consist address, although if I then manually set this to the Consist address they perform 'as expected'. I have done factory resets on both Powercab and decoders but still get this phenomenon. Any ideas why they might not be behaving as expected...? Many thanks for any help/suggestions as to how this might be fixed 🙂