I have a Dallee sound card installed in a trailing car behind my Bachmann Climax (newer version) At first I used a reed switch with two mags on the axle to activate the chuff. But that arrangement did not provide enough chuffs per revolution of the wheels to look timed with the piston motion of the climax engine. In hopes of a higher chuff rate, I installed 4 mags on the wheel of the car. But the reed switch did not seem to open/close fast enough and was equivalent to the two mags on the axle.

In hopes of using the optical chuff from the Bachmann engine I ran wires from the Bachmann board in the tender area, splice out the reed switch, and Spliced in one wire to the locomotive ground from the Bachmann board and the other wire to the #5 pin (Chuff trigger 1) on the Bachmann board. But then there is no chuff at all.

Will someone explain what is wrong with my thinking…How using a trailing car, can I use the Bachmann optical electronics to stimulate the chuff circuit on the Dallee board. I should point out that the power for the Dallee sounds board is from the pick up wheels on trailing car. Then I do feed that into the power input on the Bachmann board to help the Climax get through the LBB plastic frog on my track without sputtering.

Help would be appreciated…thank you.

There is probably too much out side light bouncing around. I was successful using an optic.

I placed it very close to an axle I painted black and white. I placed it in the center of the truck. I get some sun here in S Az. (http://www.largescalecentral.com/externals/tinymce/plugins/emoticons/img/smiley-wink.gif)

Test it on the bench in a controlled light. Might reverse the leads if it’s polarity sensitive… I dunno about that.

I hope this helps.

John

Thank you for the reply. The optical sensors are sealed inside the Climax cylinders; so no light can get to them. I think it is similar to the c-19 in that respect. The engine is run only on an indoor layout.

bob

Problem solved!!!

bob

And, how did you solve the problem?

I reversed the wires that I had running to the Bachmann board and change the ground I was using to the one closest to the chuff pad and that did the trick.