Hey everyone,

I recently received a 3071 in the middle of a digital conversion. Basically the original reverse unit had been removed and everything cleared out for the chip, which was never wired in.

I am keen to get this loco/set back together, but I'm not sure how to do so properly. I know everything is in place and nothing missing, so I think the areas I need help are the following:

1: I can wire up the motor, power lead and ground lead like a normal conversion no problem, so all is good there. Quick question though- can a lokpilot work with a standard 3 pole motor, or does it need a DC magnet? I would assume so but I thought I'd ask (I can use the 5 pole setup for another project ;) )

2: How do I wire the lighting to the chip? I have two leads coming from the unpowered end of the train, and two for the red and white bulbs up front. Would I wire 1 white and 1 red to each directional lead on the chip, creating what in theory is directional lighting? Or would that short something out? The train is using the factory wiring harness and pickup arrangement, the only thing different is the chip going into the head unit

3: How do the two pickup shoes come into play here? I"m not sure I understand their function, and if I need to retain both. Advice is appreciated.

Thanks! I'm going to try and wrap this guy up tomorrow night if I can sort out the electrical puzzle!

Hi John,

You can follow Svein's notes for a fully blown conversion, but if you want a simple conversion you could copy my version.

What I did was to replace the motor with a 60944 motor kit. Yes, you do need to have a DC motor, but even simpler than a 60944 kit is to use the approriate HAMO magnet for a LFCM.

I replaced the reverse unit with a decoder, as you suggest. The original wiring has a pickup shoe change over, but this function complicates the conversion, so I removed the rear pickup shoe and only use the front one. The two wires running through the train can now be used exclusively for the lights.

Isolating the lights from ground also requires running another cable through the train, so I retained the lights in the original configuration, with the return through ground. As you suggest, I wired one of the headlight wires to the decoder front light output, and the other to the rear light output. Of course, I got them backwards and had to revese the two wires! I then connected the rear light wires which run through the train to the same two light outputs. You must have disconnected the rear slider, as the red rear light is also connected to the slider, and this would short out your decder light output.

The end result is I have the desired digital operation, with directional lights which I can control with F0. Three white lights at the front and two red at the rear, and they change over with direction. There is a small amount of flicker due to the common ground return, but I can live with that.

The slider change-over no longer works, so I have to remember that the train will not stop correctly at a signal if it is travelling backwards. I don't use signal control on my layout, so this is not a problem for me. An incidental benefit of removing the rear slider is that the rear end is less prone to derailment now.

I hope you find this useful. If you are not sure of my explanation let me know.

Ray

Hi John,

That sounds about right. You will probably end up, as I did, with both sets of red lights and both sets of white lights on at the same time! Fortunately it's easy to correct by changing the order of the wires at the offending end.