# TrainTek



## Treeman (Jan 6, 2008)

Has anyone seen the new TrainTek adapter boars for USA Trains. I have not yet been able to get them thru Tony. The TrainTek site shows them available.


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## Greg Elmassian (Jan 3, 2008)

Have not seen them, but due to wildly conflicting reports of what they will do, I called the manufacturer directly and talked to him at length. 

The board basically just brings track power to the "socket" and puts power to the motors. It does not supply any outputs to the existing lighting that makes "sense" (at least to me). 

That's hand in hand with his lighting boards that replace the existing lighting boards and have leds (and I assume dropping resistors) 

He cuts a opening between the existing slide switch holes to accommodate a power plug. 

I don't actually see any advantage over just getting some 2 pin JST connectors and connecting to the track and motor wires and connecting them to the screw terminals of the already available "sockets", directly to the screw terminals of decoders like the Zimo and Titan. 

I thought there were some pictures of this on his site (Train Tek)... I also believe they have not shipped yet. 

I sure wish QSI had put the following design into production (with plug in connectors for the existing lighting, be it 5v or 18v:










Greg


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## Treeman (Jan 6, 2008)

If that is the case they will be a disappointment. I was thinking they would have electronics to take care of all lighting in USA locos. Like what AirWire has done with the drop ins. They are great. The bi-color LED's have always been my pain.


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## Greg Elmassian (Jan 3, 2008)

Yeah, I'm not trying to bad-talk the Train Tek product, but many people told me that it would hook up directly to the existing lighting, and be "plug and play" 

As you can see from the board above, a "universal" board takes a number of connectors AND circuitry to accommodate the USAT common ground (ground is minus) as opposed to typical decoder common (common is plus).. and to further handle it, the reversing polarity applied to the bicolor classification leds. 

Upon direct investigation, the "plug and play" only applies to the track and motors and you have to replace the lighting with leds. 

The board above is the only true plug and play board I have ever seen for USAT... too bad it's too expensive to manufacture... although buying the "led boards" is an additional 40 or 60 bucks... so in the big picture, the board above would be the same final total cost. 

Greg


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## N1CW (Jan 3, 2008)

*Disclaimer = Just a customer with no $ connection to TrainTek other than my Visa card.
*
*Mike:*
I was there on 3-1-13 to check on the GP-38 config. Gary had the light boards and[/b]
was starting an install. He told me that he would complete the install and take[/b]
photos to update the -38 manual and upload to the web site. I just looked (3-11-13) but[/b]
the update has not be made yet. [/b]

They open on Tuesday so possibly when it will get updated.[/b]

Greg: 
I do not think there is anything about cutting a hole - 
?? CVP's did have something about that ???[/b] *You do have to relocate the factory smoke control boards to the upper shell.*


*
*The 2 used (and rode hard) GP-38's that I had obtained had butchered exsisting light boards.[/b]

The early one had the seperate wire[/b]s between the boards and old porclain smoke generators.[/b]
The[/b] 2nd one had 1 3-pin + 1 4-pin flat ribbon cable and newer fan smoke generators.[/b]

Both had DOA Midget E-5 Base screw in bulbs (Radio Shack 272-1142 6volt replacement)[/b]

There are 3 sepeate boards for the -38 (each one different) while the -7/9 appear to use[/b]
a single board but with the compoents/connectors mounted differently.[/b]
The -38 version will have 3 seperate flat flex cables similar to QSI G-wire rcvr board.[/b]


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## Greg Elmassian (Jan 3, 2008)

Ray, you are right, in the cigar smoke haze last night I confused the CVP drop in "hole"... I have not gotten a picture to know what switches - if any - are on the train tek board. 

The gp7 (it is a gp7 hah!) has more boards with a few components in the nose... and yes those bulbs are a pain!!!! I spent a bunch of time trying to get both voltages of the screw in bulbs... had to do some creative things. 

In many installations, I reversed the LEDs on the boards to work with "DCC common", then added a decoder with a resistor bridge to control the red/green class light... then either did something creative with the marker light bulbs and put leds in the headlights. 

Greg


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## N1CW (Jan 3, 2008)

*Greg*

4 switches reduced to one - Smoke unit disable.

the_Other_Ray[/b]


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## Treeman (Jan 6, 2008)

So Ray, do you know if they handle the original USA lighting?


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## Greg Elmassian (Jan 3, 2008)

Are those screw terminal blocks for the lights? Hard to see. Maybe the spring loaded "capture" type terminals? 

There's a white connector on the top, but the wires obscure the silk screen description, what is that? 

I see that these 2 boards are not the same board.. the bottom picture does not have the connector for the marker lights. 

I see no circuitry that would handle a bipolar led like the stock class lights... 

I also see that the unit uses pins 10, 9, 8 on the Titan (must be since no other decoder does anything there) which are respectively: smoke fan, highway crossing trigger, and LED #3 .... 

Pretty strange... 

The smoke unit is connected to pin 8 (which is the current sink for the smoke heater/unit) and to one of the track pickups (rather than pin 6, unregulated rectified track power) 

I hope that is a beta board and these items have been addresses / corrected.. 

Greg


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## bobvandno2 (Nov 4, 2009)

I put one in my two GP9s.They work great Gary is top notch at helping. I bought the boards with the replacement lights and I got a QSI board from him worked like a charm, Also has a connecter for on board battery power.


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## Dick413 (Jan 7, 2008)

Bob 
did you get your SD45? 
Dick


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## N1CW (Jan 3, 2008)

*Mike*
*No connector/connections for the factory light boards.







*

*Greg*
*I changed the picture to show the white connector marking = Phoenix Power.*

*The are no screws but a press fit 5 pin flat cable as used for the Gwire Rcvr.*

*I asked Gary to provide signal name pinout in the manual for these connections.*

*re: 10 Pin connector - On the GP-38, that is where I had a issue vs QSI documentation.*
*..............I do not think I will like the outcome.**







*


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## N1CW (Jan 3, 2008)

Posted By Greg Elmassian on 11 Mar 2013 02:00 PM 
....SNIP.....
I also see that the unit uses pins 10, 9, 8 on the Titan (must be since no other decoder does anything there) which are respectively: smoke fan, highway crossing trigger, and LED #3 .... 

Pretty strange... 

The smoke unit is connected to pin 8 (which is the current sink for the smoke heater/unit) and to one of the track pickups (rather than pin 6, unregulated rectified track power) 

I hope that is a beta board and these items have been addresses / corrected.. 

Greg 



*True for the TITAN SCREWS but not for the Titan USA-10 Magnum pins. *
*"Diesel Sound Installation and Operation Manual Rev C: 11/12"

Page 2 **has a note about:*
*J2-8= Class Lights*
*J2-9= Cab Light*


*J2-10=Fire Box..........????? Number Boards ????*


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## Greg Elmassian (Jan 3, 2008)

maybe Tony's crew will have a special file to remap the outputs... the pins on a Titan are connected to the screw terminal above. 

hmm.. I guess we will see when the production Train Tek boards come out.. I know very well the default mappings for the Titan.. 

Ray, am I correct in my interpretation of the board pictures? 

Greg


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## jbooker (Jan 15, 2008)

I don't get why folks are hung up wanting to use the stock USA lighting. I believe I've read elsewhere on this forum that the stock lights are no good for DCC and that some of the bulbs use way more power than they need to - compared to LED.

Isn't that why many have gone to great lengths to make homebrew replacement lighting boards? Like so:
http://www.girr.org/girr/tips/tips5/gp9_tips.html#lighting

In that regard, the TrainTek Adapt-A-Boards are truly plug n play - especially when used with QSI -Titan USA decoders. Gary told me that he worked closely with Josh at QSI - the Adapt-A-Boards and the Titan-USA decoders were developed together.

http://www.qsisolutions.com/#!titan-usa/c1yqn

Maybe that's the hangup, Titan USA is a new decoder for USA locos - specifically designed to be used with Adapt-a-Board - we're not talking about other Titan models.

I have an Adapt-A-Board that's going in a loco which already has Phoenix Sound. Since it has sound, I will forgo the pricy QSI decoder and use digitrax with 'aristo' plug. The digitrax has the 10-pins which plug into the 10-pin on the Adaptaboard, but unlike the QSI, none of those pins are wired on the digitrax decoder - they are there to simply support the board.

I confirmed with Gary that pins 8, 9 & 10 on the 10-pin connector are Front Num, Rear Num and Marker lights respectively. I will solder the digitrax function wires to those pins and see if I can make lighting functions plug n play on digitrax decoder the same way they are for QSI.

I'll let you know the result.

Josh


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## Greg Elmassian (Jan 3, 2008)

The answer is simple, it takes a lot of work to re-do the lights, pull out the old boards, put in new ones, and they are not cheap.

I've reworked some USAT trains stuff to keep the stock boards and rewired them. More work than most people want to do.

Funny, you say the Train Tek boards are "truly plug and play" and your last sentence speaks of soldering wires.

It's all in the amount of effort vs. cost.

By the way, I believe his lighting boards do not keep the bi-color "class light" function of most USAT diesels.

A small nit, but NOTHING in this scale is perfect.

Greg


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## jbooker (Jan 15, 2008)

The answer is simple, it takes a lot of work to re-do the lights, pull out the old boards, put in new ones, and they are not cheap.
>>> Compared to the time it takes to build your own boards or rework the USA boards, they are reasonably priced in my view.

I've reworked some USAT trains stuff to keep the stock boards and rewired them. More work than most people want to do.
>>> then it sounds to me like the replacement boards are a good alterative for most people.

Funny, you say the Train Tek boards are "truly plug and play" and your last sentence speaks of soldering wires.
>>> they are designed to be plug n play with TITAN USA decoder. They happen to be plug n play with digitrax aristo style decoders too except for the discrete control over headlights, marker lights and number board lights. Because the digitrax doesn't have thos functions wired to those pins. The soldering I'm talking about is 3 spots on digitrax decoder to give them the same PnP light control that the QSI has. This soldering doesn't happen inside the loco - it happens on the decoder only.

It's all in the amount of effort vs. cost.
>>> exactly right. In my view these are low effort - reasonable cost.

By the way, I believe his lighting boards do not keep the bi-color "class light" function of most USAT diesels.
>>> I'm no expert, but I've read the bi-color is not prototypical anyway.

A small nit, but NOTHING in this scale is perfect.
>>> true, nor is anything cheap and effortless.

>>>By the way, correct me if I'm wrong, but it's one thing to have a board that's PnP with stock lights - it's another thing to have one that offers discrete control over each set of lights (head, marker, num) - the former may be what some people want to save cost and or effort, but the latter isn't even possible with the stock light boards.

PS the TrainTek installation manul is the best description (with pictures) of how to open a USA train that I have ever seen. http://www.traintekllc.com/tech/GP7%20Adapt-A-Board%20User%20Guide%20REV-B%20Large.pdf

Have a great day!


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## Greg Elmassian (Jan 3, 2008)

You know, you asked a question on why people do something.

I gave some explanations.

All you did is rebut / attempt to refute every answer.

Next time don't ask a question unless you really want an answer.

If you are not open to other's opinions and that people may not have the same skill set or priorities as you, then please don't post in the first place...

Just post that you are shilling for the product and will disagree with anyone with a different opinion.

Greg


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## jbooker (Jan 15, 2008)

As for 'shill' name calling, I resent the swindler implication. 

As said previously, keeping the stock lights "may be what some people want to save cost and or effort". I'll go further to agree that it would have been nice had the product included a plug for stock lights. Even though it would cost the rest of us more. 
In my view that's being "open to other opinions/skills/priorities"...and perhaps whatever else Greg feels my behavior should include.

For the benefit of anyone who might be interested in the subject of this thread - as opposed to name calling - I'll try to restate.

The point of my question was to bring into this discussion the fact that USA stock lights are known to be problematic with DCC because of the type of LEDs, inability to get constant intensity & excessive power consumption - not to mention replacing the incandescent bulbs requires pulling the light boards. 

Some folks have solved all of this by rewiring or making custom light boards. This product <shill warning>and only this product, to my knowledge<\shill warning> solves all of this while also adding aristo socket and discrete lighting control.

The answer I got was because replacing the light boards is "a lot of work" and rewiring the lights is "More work than most people want to do"

In the context of rewiring the stock lights, I was not refuting the claim that it's a lot of work. I was simply pointing out that the reason Greg states is exactly the problem that this product solves.

Namely: Compared to rewiring or building custom light boards, this product most certainly eliminates a lot of work because, of course, you'll be pulling the stock boards in either case.

Compared to keeping the stock boards, I don't know if this product is right for you.

So, for those who want to keep the stock lights, I'm sorry for any perceived insensitivity in my prior remarks. And for Greg - Sticks and stones may break my bones...etc. ;-)

Have a great day!


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## Cougar Rock Rail (Jan 2, 2008)

> If you are not open to other's opinions and that people may not have the same skill set or priorities as you, then please don't post in the first place...
> 
> Just post that you are shilling for the product and will disagree with anyone with a different opinion.


 As Bob Marley once said, "Before you point your finger, make sure your hands are clean".


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## Totalwrecker (Feb 26, 2009)

Opinions will always be challenged, facts are supposed to be irrefutable. 


perhaps a review of Monty Python's discussion of said, would be in order. I believe it's under;




John


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## Homo Habilis (Jul 29, 2011)

John:

No it's not! 

Mark


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## Totalwrecker (Feb 26, 2009)

Yes it is!


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## Homo Habilis (Jul 29, 2011)

And on, and on, and on . . . . . . . . . .

Monty Python Will Celebrate 40 Years of 'Holy Grail' at Tribeca Film Fest -

http://www.rollingstone.com/movies/...s-of-holy-grail-at-tribeca-film-fest-20150311


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