First of all, what is it?
When using digital locomotives, you need to have a locomotive fitted with a decoder. Most of the locomotives currently sold are DCC ready, meaning there is a slot to fit a decoder. A decoder is not that expensive and easy to install. Or take the sting out of this operation and buy DCC Fitted locomotives. Either way, once the decoder is fitted and you are sure you have done it right, the train might still go backwards....it does, happened to me twice. This is where i found out about the existence of CV29. It is a setting of the decoder that can handle multiple things, but the most important 2 settings are default direction and DC Operation.
Setting CV29
Setting these is fairly simple but the number to set is a bit of nerdy algorithm stuff. But basically, the number should be in the digital format of 1111. I realize most people do not know what this means but every position is a switch. so 0001 means only the first (reading from the right) is switched on. 1101 means the first, third and fourth are switched on. But because we humans find this difficult to grasp, we decided that the numeric system is easier. So position one is given the number 1, position 2 is 2, position 3 is 4 (gotcha, you thought it would be 3) and position 4 is 8. Add these up and we have a numeric presentation.
In our examples, 0001 is 1 and 1101 is 1+4+8 = 13.
More Info
Anyway, if you want to know what is going on, check this link: (click me)
But how does this help me?
Well, remember the train going backwards...just set this value to 1 and it goes forward when it needs to.
Want to use your digital train on an analog layout? set this value to 4.
Want to do both? set the value to 5.
It helped me quite a bit and using the Hornby eLink and a seperate programming track made short work of my problems...
Last remark
When a decoder is not fitted, never, ever place the train on a digital layout. You WILL burn the motor!
Placing a Digital Only locomotive on an analog track is not harmfull. It just does not work. No damage is done.
