Rapido Trains RDC 6133, Operating Handbook

Page 1: ...Français au verso ...

Page 2: ...n DCC at about 98 MPH as measured using our NCE system at the office If you are the type of model railroader that likes to shoot his models around 18 radius curves at 400 MPH thereby launching them into the stratosphere you are out of luck We suggest strapping a real jet engine to the roof just like the NYC did And just in case you didn t expect it to doing so will void the warranty You can reach ...

Page 3: ...NG AND YOUR WARRANTY This is so important it even gets put in before the Table of Contents Please read it carefully The real RDC came with a warranty from Budd its builder in Philadelphia If you as a railroad towed anything behind your RDC you would void the warranty The same applies for your Rapido RDC The Rapido RDC has two very small motors which are strong enough to pull your Rapido RDC and no...

Page 4: ...n The Sound 14 Functions 15 Functions and Prototypical Operation 15 Sound Volume Settings 18 Factory Reset 19 Awesome Slow Speed Thingy 19 Motor Hum 20 More Information 20 Limited Lifetime Warranty 20 Acknowledgements 21 RDC DCC FUNCTION QUICK REFERENCE F0 HEADLIGHTS F1 BELL F2 HORN F3 STRAIGHT TO 4 F4 BRAKES F5 DOPPLER HORN SLOW F6 DITCH LIGHTS WHERE APPLICABLE F7 HEADLIGHT DIMMER F8 STARTUP MUTE...

Page 5: ...mers know Chris has done the bulk of the restoration work on our RDC 6133 He also resurrected the Toronto Railway Museum s LRC locomotive 6917 and is currently restoring our sleeping car Edmundston In order to get accurate recordings of an RDC equipped with Cummins engines Chris got permission from VIA Rail Canada to take the mothballs out of their RDC 6215 and fire it up Together with another uns...

Page 6: ...h We can t fix a model that has had its finished ruined by decal setting solution If you used Solvaset and ruined your RDC and you have only now just read this Sorry CHANGING THE COUPLERS We ve put medium length couplers on the RDC ends so they will look good while clear ing the pilots on wide curves But if you have tight curves you may find that you need to replace the coupler at one end with a l...

Page 7: ... spend 45 minutes styling Eventually Jason took the clippers and did it himself in five not 45 minutes Where were we Right so maybe the person assembling your RDC was at the barber all night and consequently installed a grab iron crooked Your model her hair Hmmm Tough choice Hair wins A bigger issue is damage in transit More than 99 5 of all models are perfect when they leave our warehouse But our...

Page 8: ...s part will receive Use CA or 5 minute epoxy See illustration at right Pilot If your railroad usually did not have the pilot in stalled on their RDCs we include it anyway just in case you are in possession of the ONE PHOTO that shows the pilot installed Horns The RDC used many many horns sometimes sev eral over the life of one unit We ve installed a horn that is either accurate or close and depend...

Page 9: ...lled a working Gyralite LED behind both end doors To install the Gyralite drill a hole in the location shown in the illustration 4 5mm just shy of 3 16 below the end door window You will need to remove the top safety chain The hole should be big enough to clear the clear plastic lightway at the rear of the light but smaller than the size of the Gyralite housing Glue on the Gyralite using white glu...

Page 10: ...event it s bumped Use a small amount of CA to mount this to the side of your RDC We suggest doing some clearance testing too as the part does protrude off the side of the car body considerably Extra extra bits We include extra windshield wipers and door handles in case one of yours gets beamed to the moon INTERIOR LIGHTS AND NUMBER BOARDS We heard you loud and clear after our first production run ...

Page 11: ...re to remember these important points Our factory in China is next to a Mexican Jumping Bean factory Occasionally products from the two factories get mixed up and some of the little parts on your RDC may actually have been manufactured from Mexican Jumping Beans That means that as soon as you turn your RDC over and start fiddling numerous bits may take the opportunity to jump to their freedom We w...

Page 12: ... are only 299 95 each which is about the same price as an entry level DCC system If you buy five effigies we ll throw in Dan Garcia for free The real one not an effigy If you buy six we ll also throw in the DCC system INSTALLING A SILENT DCC DECODER The RDC contains an ESU designed motherboard which is connected to the track motor and lighting outputs It is located in the roof A blind plug is atta...

Page 13: ... you want to run your sound equipped RDC on a DC layout the Back EMF circuit can cause issues when you re trying to bring your RDC to a stop To turn off Back EMF you will need to bring your RDC to a model railroad equipped with DCC and set CV49 to 18 If you want to turn it back on change CV49 to 19 If you have a large DC layout and you like to operate sound equipped locomotives it might be worthwh...

Page 14: ...mally the road number of the RDC before going any further This can be done either on your programming track recommended or on the main if your system supports pro gramming on the main Be aware however that if you do program the RDC on the main and you have any other locomotives assigned to address 3 the normal default address for new locomotives that ALL of them will also be changed to your new ad...

Page 15: ...n FUNCTIONS F0 Headlights F12 Servicing Mode F1 Bell F13 There is no F13 F2 Horn F14 Doppler Horn Single Blatter F3 Straight to 4 F15 Doppler Horn Hancock Air F4 Brakes Whistle F5 Doppler Horn Slow F6 Ditch Lights Where Applicable F7 Headlight Dimmer F8 Startup Mute Shutdown F9 Red Classification Lights F10 Door Gyralites Where Applicable F11 Doppler Horn Fast FUNCTIONS AND PROTOTYPICAL OPERATION ...

Page 16: ...cted you will hear the RDC sound ramp up quickly to notch 4 full power It will stay at notch 4 until you press it again When you press F3 again it will throttle down to whatever notch you are currently in Note that this function controls the sound only and not the motor speed which is still controlled using the throttle settings as normal That means that if you forget to turn off F3 your RDC will ...

Page 17: ...ights will always be lit on the rear as determined by the direction of travel F10 Door Gyralites Many railroads mounted a Gyralite oscillating headlight to the front door in service At the end of the run the Gyralite was removed and mounted at the other end for the return trip We have included a Gyralite LED on the circuit board behind the door If you choose to install one or both Gyralites the LE...

Page 18: ...t horn to a Hancock by following the instructions under F2 Horn above SOUND VOLUME SETTINGS The sound volume is adjustable If maxing out all the volume settings does not make it loud enough for you Jon Calon suggests buying a real RDC You can also adjust the relative volume levels of the different elements of the sound recordings To set the volume levels go into the program mode on your DCC system...

Page 19: ... a factory reset If you manage to lose all of the sounds on your locomotive then you have probably set fire to your decoder with a voltage spike and chances are you have an MRC 1300 and didn t read the instructions before running your RDC specifically the bit about not using an MRC 1300 with your RDC Open up your RDC and pour out the congealed blob that used to be a decoder AWESOME SLOW SPEED THIN...

Page 20: ... available on the RDC page in the Support section of our web site LIMITED LIFETIME WARRANTY We will do our best to solve any problems or issues that you may have with your RDC We recommend that you operate your RDC within a few months of receiving it as we will not have an everlasting supply of spare parts If your RDC has any defects that originate from the factory we will repair your RDC us ing n...

Page 21: ...dell Lemon Steve Lucas Pete Magoun Chris Marrable Zeke Medeiros Dave Minshall Jim Mischke Jakob Mueller Don Oltmann Jean Louis Ozorak Jocelyn Pacquet Gerry Putz Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania John Riddell Jeff Root Brian Schuff John Sheridan Jay Thompson Tom Thompson Several Other People Named Thompson Toronto Railway Historical Association James Van Bokkelen Otto Vondrak Noel Widdlefield Gord Wi...

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