Life-Like Proto 1000 Budd RDC-1

Sounds good to me

As an update, it's apparently an RDC-2 and not an RDC-3 that I have (during this project I have been learning the ABCs of RDCs!). Operation Light Board Delete has been performed successfully, with the board replaced by a styrene sheet on top of which are taped an older Digitrax decoder and all of the wiring, to keep such things up and out of window view.

Oh god, all that work and you put a digitrax decoder in. Youll figure that mistake out the first time something shorts out and it wont restart running without tipping it off the tracks and putting it back on,.

I'm going to guess you're not a Digitrax fan. That's fine, and I'll admit Digitrax isn't my favorite either. Yes, I could have sunk another $40 bucks into this and put a TCS T-series or something else that fits a 9 pin straight plug in there too... but fact is I have a pile of perfectly functional Digitrax decoders sitting around surplus since I upgraded other installs, they're already bought and paid for, so why not use one of them. If for whatever spurious reason this one lets the magic smoke out, fine, I'll take the shell off, unplug it, plug another spare decoder in, and I'm on my way again lather rinse repeat until I've run out of Digitrax spares, at which point I'll probably be in a nursing home and this will be someone else's project.

If I had wanted to pay huge money on this, I would have just gotten a Rapido and been done with it. Instead I bought a 20 year old model off eBay, did a basically zero cost upgrade to DCC, and I'm using the money saved to do things like add some detail parts including twelve LEDs at three bucks apiece into it. All told, I don't think I'll have $100 in it when I'm all done. But I will have a decent RDC model.

No not really. they have a great system but a horrible interface, but i digress. they had a lot of issues with the programming on early models. i just try to avoid them. i prefer the NCE decoders for non sound, if i really need a fancy engine to work well ill go for Lenz. otherwise ESU or Tcs wow. im a TCS dealer so i get the decoders pretty cheap.

Either way, if you have the parts sitting around might as well go for it! i have done the same thing plenty of times. Run the junk till its all dead and then spend the money. railroad people are cheap, esp engineers.

With all the lights I put in, I need six function decoders. I was reminded of the primary reason I moved away from Digitrax last night - their "six function" decoders rely on you cutting away the shrink wrap on the decoder to uncover a couple of tiny little solder pads to wire up for two of those functions. Soldering is a necessary but unfun skill that I try to avoid when possible, and those solder pads are ridiculously small. A couple of near burned fingers and I have decided maybe these spare Digitraxes can be used for something else I don't need six functions for. You mentioned you're a TCS dealer - I'll PM you.