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Proto-1000 Rail Diesel Car DCC Conversion.
by Larry Maier
The Life Like Proto-1000 Rail Diesel Car is a nice
addition to any layout. Although it is advertised as "DCC ready",
I think it may be the equivalent of a "handyman special"
in the housing market. There is no information in the directions
on DCC conversion, although the circuit board mounted in the top
has three X’s and a note to "cut for DCC".
To begin the conversion, follow the directions to
remove the couplers and the plastic shell to expose the printed
wiring board in the top of the unit. Next, use a razor knife to
cut the three copper traces marked with an X. Make sure that there
is at least a 1/16 gap in each of the traces. Better yet, if you
have an ohm-meter, check that the traces are open. There are seven
soldering points labeled P1 through P8 (P3 is missing) for connecting
to the DCC encoder. There are no directions as to which connection
goes to which decoder wire. Here is the secret decoder ring:
| P1 |
Orange |
Motor + |
| P2 |
Yellow |
Reverse (seat end) Headlight |
| P3 |
|
No Connection |
| P4 |
Black |
Left Rail Power (Fireman’s side) |
| P5 |
Grey |
Motor – |
| P6 |
White |
Forward (baggage end) Headlight |
| P7 |
Blue |
Lighting Common |
| P8 |
Red |
Right Rail Power (Engineer’s side) |
Once the leads were soldered, I used a piece of 3M
Mounting Tape to attach the decoder to a convenient spot on the
printed wiring board. After the conversion, the unit ran smoothly
under DCC control. The lights, however, where barely illuminated.
The RDC comes with diode controlled constant lighting. Under DCC
operation, the diodes limit the voltage to the lamps to about 1.1
volts. I found the best solution was to simply remove all of the
diodes. They are mounted in groups of four: D1 to D4 and D5 to D8.
There is one group for each headlight. Remove all eight diodes.
Replace D4 and D7 with a jumper wire soldered into the printed wiring
board. Next, find the 300 ohm (Orange, Black, Black, Black) resistor
mounted on the circuit card. Add a 1000 ohm 1/4 resistor (Red Black,
Black, Brown, Digi-Key part number 1.00KXBK-ND) in parallel with
the 300 ohm resistor mounted on the board. This will bring the lamp
voltage to 2.1 volts and about 43 ma of current. This makes the
headlights acceptably bright. To really improve the headlights,
replace the existing lamps with white LED’s (Digi-key part
number CMD204UWC-ND) and change the 300 ohm resistor to 470 ohms
1 Watt (Digi-Key part number 470W-1-ND).
The finished installation is shown below :
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