| Engine wiring has also been designed to support maintenance. After experimenting with various DCC decoders,
these engines use the Z2 from Train Control Systems. Rather than directly soldering it into the engines, the good folks at TCS
sent me the parts to make custom connectors for my engines. As the plan to the right shows, the idea is to use one female side
of a TCS 6-pin connector with three male sides of a 2-pin connector. |
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| Here's the connector parts as sent by TCS. |
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| Before the connector parts will fit together correctly, the inside edges of the 2-pin connectors need to be sanded/filed to
match the spacing of the 6-pin connector. Once that's done, here's and example of an assembled connector. |
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| Having tried a sound decoder from Austria, without much luck, and a Digitrax Z-scale decoder (which worked, but still takes too
much space) this time around, I'm using the TCS Z2 decoder. Here's what one looks like out of the box. |
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| To attach the decoder to the wiring harness, trim the wires on the decoder to one-half inch, strip about 1/32" or so,
solder in place, and insulate with 1/4" of heat shrink tubing. |
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| Next, cut 1.5" long pieces of the extra wire from the decoders and attach it to the 2-pin connectors, matching up
colors |  |