On my recent trip to Germany I purchased an E44 electric Marklin 34440. It's one of my favorite engines and ran through the town near Stuttgart where I spent my early childhood years.

I operate digital with LokSound decoders. My intention is to add an ESU LokSound3 decoder. Upon inspecting the engine, I discovered the engine has a can motor and two cardan drives to the trucks. I had been used to installing hihg-propulsion 6090X motors on other engines, but this can motor and additional electronics has been a little unsure about proceeding.

Anyone have experience with this particular engine/model and have any of you ever installed a LokSound decoder in one? Your advice, please.

Peter Neumann
Florida

Hi Peter, Loksound drives the motor with high frequency pulses, so it is usable with coreless (Faulhaber, Maxxon) motors. You'll need to adjust some CVs, as usual, but their values could be different from those used with normal motors.
Perhaps you have some difficulty with the leds, if this Lok has them (I don't have any Ellok) because the polarity could be just the opposite to that needed for the leds to operate with common '+' (orange wire) and switched '-' (white and yellow wires).
If this is the case, you'll need to build an additional PCB with a couple transistors to drive the leds.
Hope this helps.
Best regards,

Anyone in the U.S. who can / will convert this 34440 to digital with an LokSound3 decoder (which I already have purchased)? Please contact me.

Peter Neumann