Model Railroading > Trouble Programming MTH SD70ACe

My son bought an MTH HO sound-equipped SD70ACe about six months back. Painted as the UP D&RGW No. 1989 Heritage unit. Went to the local hobby shop today to see if they could program it, since we'd had no luck at our club. The LHS has an NCE DCC unit. They were unable to program it. In fact, their NCE unit could not even read the decoder.

Is there a "trick" or different procedure for programming MTH decoders? I assume it has a DCS decoder which is also supposed to respond to standard NMRA signals and commands. This was not the first MTH loco that our LHS had had trouble programming, so it seems to be a systematic problem.

Any help is greatly appreciated!
--Steve Schmollinger

Look here > http://www.mthtrains.com/service/ho/ps3/dcc-trouble-nce . Maybe try the factory reset, set CV 55 to 55 .
If that does not work call MTH I'm sure they will help you out.
Good Luck,
Dave

That link Steamtrainjunkie sent should help you out but I remember I had to help a friend of mine program his at our RR club and it has to be done on the Main. MAKE SURE NO OTHER LOCOMOTIVES ARE ON THE TRACK OR YOU WILL PROGRAM ALL OF THEM TO THE ADDRESS YOU'RE DOING. Good luck with MTH, I've got a couple I've had to send in 3 and 4 times to get fixed.... won't buy anymore. Don't get me wrong, they're a beautiful locomotive with nice sound and all.... WHEN they work right.

Brian
Burlington, IA

With NCE the address programs in about 1 second on the mainline. You cannot program MTH locomotives on the program track without a program track booster. Well that goes for ANY sound decoder actually.

Now with MTH locomotives, all you actually have to do to set the address to the cab number is program CV 29 to 34 or 38 and it will set. Set it to 34 if you want to disable the ability to run the loco on DC. Set to 38 if you want to run in DC and DCC. Do this on the mainline. As long as you have no other locomotives programmed to address 3, you will not program all other locomotives on the track. Remember that DCC decoders only respond to the address they are set to.

With NCE, set the throttle to address 3. Put the loco on the mainline and make sure the loco responds. Press the Prog/ESC key, select program on the main, select address 3, select 1 for address and then type in the desired address. The locomotive will sound its horn a few times and the address is set.

Programming on the mainline is not dangerous unless all of your locomotives are set to the same address.

Lee Ryan - Rio Grande Fan
Denver, CO

RioGrandeFan Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> With NCE the address programs in about 1 second on
> the mainline. You cannot program MTH locomotives
> on the program track without a program track
> booster. Well that goes for ANY sound decoder
> actually.

Not true. I program Soundtrax, Broadway, Atlas, Athearn, Bachmann etc without a
program track booster all the time. I have, however had problems programming other folks
MTH lokes on my layout. I don't own an MTH model myself so I haven't dug deep into
why, but know we have failed to program MTH lokes on my EasyDCC layout.