New Intermountain F's and DCC

[bobdobbs]

Might as well hard wire a dz123 in there.  Just wrap the red and black around the screws, and you still have to solder the orange grey and blue white to the led, just put a resistor there.  And it is way cheaper then the "PNP" decoder

[crrcoal]

I wonder if the SD40's will be this way also......

[peteski]

I'm not sure I said that...  I wasn't speculating as to IM's motivation, but rather that we recognize it's only a little more work for us.  It's not the amount of additional work we need to do but the principle of it that is annoying.

You're right - you didn't mention anything specific about cost-cutting or labor-saving steps. Weird how I read that into what you stated.  So to clear this up,  the opinion I expressed if totally of my own. 

[reinhardtjh]

The soldering part doesn't bother me.  I was already planning to figure out how to work a Loksound Select Micro onto them anyway which is a long ways from PnP.  I'm thinking I'll borrow Peteski's idea from the Bachmann 44-tonner and make my own PC board.  That might save some room.

I was just surprised neither IM nor Digitrax made it clear that there were differences between the boards.  Someone is going to get crossed up and be pissed when they have to exchange them at some point.  I know full well 90% of the people won't read the PDF online before ordering.

[Nato]

       In a somewhat related topic, I see that Kato said you will be able to (can) order decoder installed F2's , probably Kobo through your dealer, does that include E Tailers? It does look to me as other's have posted above that this is just a cost cutting move on IM's part.                                Nate Goodman (Nato).

[CVSNE]

And here I was just the other day explaining to someone how they could install a decoder without taking the frame halves apart....explains why they looked at me like I had three heads...really, I had no idea they did this. 

I suggest someone call the dedicated N scalers on the Intermountain staff and discuss.....

[reinhardtjh]

For the new one you don't have to take the frame halves apart.  You just unscrew the old board, desolder the wires and LED, feed the wires through the holes in the DCC board and solder and solder the LEDs on and screw it down.  At least the Digitrax version.  TCS hasn't released theirs yet so it may be different, but I wouldn't think so.

[basementcalling]

Not a good way to get me to preorder any of their SD40-2s. Stepping backwards in convenience in this hobby is not a good thing these days.   

[peteski]

F2s have a wide single-casting chassis.  Similar to P42s or E-units.  I don't see how the SD40-2 (narrow hood) would have the same type of construction.  Those are probably done using the conventional split-frame chassis.