I have been busy speed-matching locomotives.
First, I speed matched everything on my NCE system and found that they didn't perform the same on the club Digitrax setups. This is because the two systems put different voltages on the tracks, which is irritating but not unrecoverable.
Second I noticed that locos I thought were speed matched were, in fact, not. Generally speaking I try to match them at 50% and 99% (Digitrax doesn't go to 100%) at 65 SMPH and 120 SMPH* respectively, and set CV2 to zero and live with the results. This works well with most of my locomotives, but I found that some locos I thought were programmed to these speeds at these throttle settings were way off. Locos that I thought were set to 65/120 ended up being set at 40/75 instead.
The only thing I can figure is I had the speedometer set to K PH instead of M PH, which would throw the readings off to the degree I am experiencing (roughly 1.6 kilometers per mile). So I have a bit of Unitrack set up on the new layout (I have the benchwork complete and am working on track plans) and I have verified the speedometer is set to MPH instead of KPH, and I have started from the beginning.
So far everything is going pretty well. Kato and Atlas locos were very easy to verify and program where needed. The Fox Valley Models locos are somewhat slow, and one of them tops out at 105, so I just programmed it to keep up through the speed ranges until its top speed was met. Much to my surprise, though, the LifeLike GP18 and GP20 locos were difficult.
The Life Like GP20 is one of my favorite locomotives, and I have eight of them. I have three GP18's, only one that I run regularly in consist with a triple set of N&W GP20s. They were all set to 40/75 when I put them on the track, and at first I couldn't get them to reset when I changed CV's 5 and 6.
I finally had to program CV6 to about where I wanted it and then step CV5 up by increments in order to get any effect. I finally did get the GP20's all done (with the exception of two holiday locomotives that will be done later) and the one Southern GP18, but it was more trouble than I expected.
TCS decoders continue to have hesitation issues on my Digitrax system, something that no one has been able to explain, and the GP18's and 20's are all TCS equipped, which may have been a contributing factor. I love the slow speed control of the TCS decoders, but the hesitation to respond to throttle changes and the occasional refusal to play nice with Digitrax DCC systems is an irritant..
I have a couple of Life Like GP18's and 20's left, a quartet of FA and FBs that I will likely not bother with (they run really slow but they are a set), a bunch of old Atlas/Kato RS locos, one each Atlas SD7 and 9, an Atlas/Kato SW1500 cow/calf set that I may not bother with, and a pair of Bachmann sound equipped SD9 locos left to go.
The Bachmanns run slow so I will only program them to keep up with the others to the top of their speed range. This is somewhat surprising as well since their non-sound equipped locos are rocket ships, and since CVs 5 and 6 are non-programmable on the non-sound Bachmanns there is nothing short of changing out decoders (that would have to be wired in because there are no drop-in decoders for Bachmann GP7's that I know of) that you can do about it.
And after that... we will start in on the steam.
*Yes, I know prototypical top speeds for diesels are generally in the 65-70 MPH range, and yes I could program everything to 35/70, but running scale speeds on show layouts for the public seems really slow, so the public loses interest in watching them run. I have been considering setting them to 50/99 to match the Digitrax throttle percentages.
