@Bluebeard4590 posted:Lots of input. Thanks for all the differing perspectives. It wasn't the sounds or lights those gents were speaking of being potentially lost when converting, it was the potential loss of all the steam effects, especially on a Visionline locomotive like my BB and the couple MTHs. To answer the other question, yes I have heard of DCC, but that was what the guys in my area that do conversions were referring to using when they spoke of losing some of the effects. I have never used DCC but I am exploring it for use in the On30 locos I purchased second hand. I am afraid for a while at least, I must ask for advice in these matters.
My interest in doing this came about from the visually odd difference in the rolling stock and track and especially the wheels when having the 2 different gauges with drastically different wheel and rail height appearances on the same layout.
Again, thanks for these varied perspectives and for the advice.
I think the point that people were making is you can use dcs and legacy on 2 rail track if you convert an equipped engine for 2 rail otherwise. For legacy, you would attach the track connection to whichever rail is your ground. Legacy uses house wiring to transmit the signal that the engine picks up. For DCS, you would attach the DCS wire to the positive rail along with your track power. When you convert a dcs engine, you would need to make sure that engine power and the dcs input wire on the control board are connected to the wiper on the + wheel if I understand DCS correctly (you move the wire from the roller to the wiper, and solder the dcs input wire to that). The reason people don't use legacy and dcs likely is that 2 rail scale engines like HO and N are wired for DCC decoders.
The hard part likely will be to isolate the wheels from each other and then putting a wiper or something for the + side, that is tricky from what I understand, never tried that myself.
