Keeping the DT602 Screen On As Long As Possible

By now 99% of Digitrax's DT602 throttle owners realize that the Screen On time is a huge pain. Well Jon Jet of the Digitrax groups.io forum has figured out how to get a max of about 23 minutes of active screen time before it wants to shut down. There are three settings you have to make in the Throttle Options and they are:

ID13=On  

ID14=On  

ID18=0

You can get to them and their explanation here. This is the best we can do to keep the display on.

Hope this settles some nerves with the display. Remember, the batteries won't last as long with these settings.

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Possibly Revive A "Bricked" ESU Decoder?

The Indian Rail Modeler of the LokSound groups.io forum summarized a procedure that was originally presented by Peteski of the same group. It involved the possible revival of an apparently "bricked" V5 ESU Decoder. What the word apparently means is that it may be just scrambled not completely unusable.

To accomplish this you will need another known good decoder of the same type i.e. for a micro you'll need another micro, for a 21 pin you'll need another 21 pin, etc. (same version also v4, v5) Also, you'll need to load the sound project into the Programmer. Given these requirements, the procedure consists of the following 5 steps.

1. Take out the non-responsive decoder from the locomotive (or decoder test card)

2. Put a good decoder of the same type into the locomotive (or decoder test card)

3. Read decoder into the lokprogrammer project

4. Switch the good decoder with the non-responsive decoder

5. With the same project open, Re-write the firmware (Tools Menu - Update decoder firmware)

 Try 2 or 3 times if necessary. If it doesnt work after a third try it is probably "bricked".

This procedure is worth a try. At the cost of decoders today, if you can recover one or two you've saved a fair amount of money.

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Brand New Consisted ESU Engines Suddenly Drag to Almost Stop

This is related to the post located here. 

The author has seen this several times in ESU equipped engines during running at various events albeit a rare occurrence. Two or more brand new consisted engines which were running fine suddenly slow for no apparent reason. After isolating the problem to a single engine that is part of the consist, it was removed from the consist and everything returned to normal. Later the engine was run by itself and displayed a slow down then speed up behavior. Returning it to a consist resulted in that same behavior.

Related to this, a friend of the author bought two new Scale Trains GP 30 A&B units, both with ESU decoders, and was running them at his club's layout. These were the first ESU equipped engines he owned so he asked me what to watch out for. "F9 is Drive Hold and F10 is the independent brake. Don't press these unless you want that effect". While he was running, the drag down happened. He pressed F10 twice on the lead engine and they both returned to normal running (dumb luck it wasn't the B unit).

With this information the author called ESU tech support and was told this is a known problem and they are not sure what is causing it. One thing they did find is that some of the major manufacturers that have equipped their engine with ESU decoders have placed the F10 function, the independent brake, in one of the random function slots. This would cause the drag down at random times and could be really difficult to trace if you are not aware of this problem. 

Moral of the story
When you get a new ESU equipped engine, immediately check to see if the F10 function is in the random function collection. If it is, remove it. After checking this, if this happens to you again while running, try the F10 push and see if this works.

ESU is actively looking into this. Sorry, but this is the best that can be done for now.

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Atlas' WInter 2025 HO & N scale Catalog Released - Link Fixed

Atlas has released the Winter 2025 HO & N scale catalog. It can be downloaded here. The pre-order date for all products listed in the catalog is January 7th, 2026. 

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