I have had this 'first run' Powerline low nose Victorian Railways T class, T 367, since 2007 when they first came out and it has been hiding in its original packaging since that time and only just came out to see the light of day over the weekend, along with another Powerline T class, a V/Line high nose T, see earlier post.
They came with a simple DCC decoder and were only $260 each back in 2007 but had a switch under the hood to change between DCC and DC mode.
However, this low nose T whilst being read by JMRI would not respond to commands and was unable to be reset in the usual CV8=8 way. So, I decided to replace the OEM decoder with a DCCconcepts Zen decoder, model Z218, which I have had sitting in the parts draws since 2016.
The body is removed by first removing the couplers and draft boxes [green circled], which are very tight in the pilot cut out, then the four body screws, two at each end [red circles]. There are no handrails bridging the chassis / body, so it makes for a pretty simple separation. However, the LEDs will jam at each end on the pilots when pulling the chassis out of the body.
As the old type 'direct' decoder was being replaced I also replaced the power pickups off the bogies and also the leads off of the OEM LED block as these now had to reach to a different location within the body to regain connectivity. The wires came from stripping an old PC USB mouse cable down to individual wires and was of a suitable size for the new pickups.
The bogies are easy to remove from the chassis once the wires are removed from the push on connection covers used on these 'direct' style decoders and simply push in one side of the lug and the bogie comes out freely with the drive shaft. Put the drive shaft to one side and then remove the bogie pivot and seating cap with a little force these will pop out without the need to remove the bogie coupling from the top of the gear tower. But, if your soldering skills are still being developed, you may want to strip the bogie down to reduce the heat damage from soldering on new wires to the bogie power pickup.
The input drive worm gear is the red circle, this can be removed from the tower buy simply splitting the tower case by the clip together nature of it. Side frames and screws are in the aqua circles, and these are removed for the bogie pivot which is the yellow circle. The bottom plate is the green circle and this also clips off. These are very simple bogies to work on, strip down or reassemble.
The original decoder removed, and the replacement DCCconcepts Zen Z218 decoder and small keep alive was the last couple of wires are soldered to the plug harness.
As the image shows, fitting in the Zen decoder and Keep-Alive is easy with the size comapared to the original installed decoder, and there is still enough room for a speak if you wanted to install a sound decoder. The only changes I made to the decoder function were wiring the red marker lights for each end off of Function 3 for the front red markers, and Function 4 for the rear red markers. The headlight remained directional.
