Dummies

Most O gage makers have dummies versions of thier powered units, HO and N I do not know right off hand.

Most of the dummies I have I made myself

Most of the dummies I run on my HO Siskiyou Line I made myself by gutting a powered unit. I kept all the extra parts as components to maintain my other locos by the same manufacturer. Of course I have 60 some locos, and often many of the same model by the same manufacturer.

Athearn is the only manufacturer I'm aware of in HO that regularly made dummy locos available.

Dummy mfgs

Stewart also routinely sold AB sets where the B was a dummy.

Charlie

Dummies in N-Scale

I have yet to see anyone market a dummy locomotive in N-Scale. Therefore if you want or need one, you've got to make it from something else.

I have seen people do what Amtrak has done in real life and that is to depower a N-Scale Life Like F-40, put a baggage dore in it so it becomes what some have called a "Cabage" and use them in push-pull service.

Irv

Intermountain also offers an F7B

as a dummy unit. And includes the pickup wiring from the trucks -- is a great way to get a really big speaker in an HO unit.  In fact, the Intermountain dummies are F unit drives that failed the QA check in Colorado - the motors are removed along with some of the gearing. They're less expensive than powered units. We sold a surprising (to me) number of these when I was at Intermountain. I recall there were a few months when we had to gut powered engines that worked fine to meet the demand for unpowered units!

Marty

Dummies

 I guess I have to buy full units and gut them out and use the spares for parts.

Power Athearn BB?

Is it possible to power the BB dummies for lights and decoders?  I know they come with plastic wheels but there has to be a way that isn't too hard.

Steve

Replace the plastic wheelsets

Steve:

You'll need to replace the plastic wheelsets in the BB dummies. You can order the metal wheelsets from Athearn. The rest of the gear tower in a BB dummy is the same as in a powered unit, minus the gears, so you can pick up track power easily once you have metal wheelsets in the trucks.

Dummy units

The Athearn units took a lot of effort to push.  Replacing the axles with the metal wheels, bronze blocks, and center gear makes them MUCH easier to move.  As Joe said, you'll then have an option to use this for power pickup.  I have a few of them, but I don't really use them much.  I've only got them as I haven't bothered to finish bashing up a GP50 on an Atlas drive.  They work well enough for what I need but eventually they'll be swapped out in favor of powered units.

-

S

In N scale there are very few

In N scale there are very few dummy units, mainly because if you run trains on a grade you actually need all that power 

In N Scale there are very few

Denny,

I agree with you on that. I am modeling in HO. I am also modeling a Florida Railroad. Here in Florida everything is flat, specially in South Florida . So my layout is flat. So I really don't need the power just the looks. Florida East Coast Railroad usually runs two or three engines. They do that because of the heavy load that they pulled but not because of the grade.

Thanks Joe From Athearn

Thanks Joe

From Athearn -

40019 is the power wheels they are 20.75 for a pack of 12 plus 5.50 for
shipping we take visa or master card. 

Steve

Good for sound

I am hoping to put sound in some of my N consists eventually by putting sound into a dummy in the middle of the lashup. I expect I will have to do as Joe has done and gut a powered loco. I could perhaps just remove the weight and the shaft for one truck and have enough room while still having a little helper.. be interesting to try.

Chris

Why dummies?

Okay, looks like I'll have to ask the question - why have dummies in the first place? 

Modern decoders and whatnot don't take up more room than is available, even with a speaker as long as you are willing to sacrifice some weight.

It used to be you had the dummies for looks because getting two locomotives to work together on a DC layout could be a pain - especially if you had one turned around.

With DCC this simply isn't a problem.

Use the force (of multiple locomotives)....

What you say is true for HO ...

What you are saying may be true for HO but it isn't true for N-Scale locomotives. The decoders are smaller these days so you can put a decoder in virtually and N-Scale locomotive but if you want sound it's going awful hard to find anough space in most N-Scale locomotives for a decent speaker with out either creating a dummy locomotive or permanently attaching a car to a locomotive. Even then you still might not hear it or hear it well enough to appreciate it.

Irv

Jeff, I was going to ask the

N Scale...

To be quite honest... even in a dummy I don't think you're going to have enough room for a decent speaker. Maybe... just maybe... in a boxcar where you have the full width.

And someone mentioned that in N Scale you need as much pulling as you can get!

Why I use dummies

Sometimes there are other good reasons to use a dummy loco, in any scale.

In my case, by using a dummy, I've removed the current draw needs of the motor. I don't really need the pulling power - and in fact, it's kinda cool that I have one dummy in most of my first generation lashups, because that means they pull less than the same number of 2nd gen locos.

If you look at a dummy in the head end lashup and a dummy in the helper lashup, that's probably half an amp - and with maybe 3 trains max per power district, I've just saved 1.5 amps by using dummies.

With amp hungry sound locos, saving those amps can be very helpful.

I love them for their bodies

Joe, it never even occurred to me that dummies can be amp-savers - kewl!

I have three dummies that are leftover from old Athearn bluebox models that I could never get to run even half as well as my Katos and Atlases.  I still liked the way the bodies looked, and I didn't want them to go completely to waste.  So I stripped out the motors and gears, leaving the metal wheels; now I MU them with models that I haven't yet succeeded in speed-matching (some of my decoders simply don't respond to any changes I put in certain CV values).  I've designed my layout so the ruling grade is < 0.5%, so - except for a coal drag with live loads - a single powered loco can pull a 12-foot* train anywhere on the main line.

* Modern cars come in widely varying lengths so I can't use the number-of-cars standard of measuring train size.

Jeff, on most N diesels, you

Jeff,

on most N diesels, you can squeeze in a decent speaker as long as you remove motor, circuit board and file/mill some of the frame - depending on which diesel, you probably need to do just one of the mentioned tasks.

In N you need pulling power only if you want to pull long strings of cars on a grade, whereas there are no problems on level track. I have a 3% grade on my layout and I actually need at least 2 Tunnel Motor to pull 30 cars, while just one single SD9 is able to pull the same cars on the level areas.

N dummy speaker mounting

You would have to get an oval speaker. I admit that it probably wouldnt sound very good. It would be more of a gee whiz thing.

Honestly, on the layouts I have visited, I have not been impressed by diesel sound on any of the HO locos either. I have not heard much steam.

I do plan to explore under the table sound with my mini layout when I get a chance.

Regards,

Chris

Under the Table Sound and N-Scale

I have been thinking about this since I saw one of the many things that Joe made part of this forum as Movie Monday. That was one of the videos that were taken at this past year's NMRA convention. This one was from Digitrax and the had someone there from Soundtrax that talked about this being available in the near future.

Under the table sound makes having a sound module (or at least the speaker) in your N-Scale locomotive unnecessary but you would need to have someway of detecting where your locomotive is and what speaker it was near. Transponding would allow that to happen. Next you would need to have some way of having the sound come from an area near where your locomotive is located. It's doable but probably at a lot of dollars in cost.

It's still an intriguing idea that should be explored.

Irv

Chris, you have to listen to

Chris,

you have to listen to the Micro-Tsunami with a properly enclosed speaker installed in an N scale Kato SP4449's tender. The first time my friend Enzo came over with it and we tried on my layout, I've been blown away :D Unluckly the decoder got damaged and the engine wasn't running, but I think when this is fixed I will post a video here.

Nothing compared to an O scale speaker, but I think it would sound great set  at a relatively low volume during an op session.

SurroundTraxx

Irv,

 The Soundtraxx project is SurroundTraxx and it requires you have a Digitrax system with transponding... not knowing how transponding works, or how you would tell a speaker where it's located, I'll leave it at that.