Zimo consisting tips

Overview

First, remember that there are 3 types of consisting, read about them here:  DCC consisting (near bottom of page) In short:

• basic/address consisting - set all your locos to the same address (this is not really consisting!)
• universal / "old style" consisting - where the command station "remembers" the consist, and sends commands to each loco's unique address for all commands
• advanced consisting - where the advanced consisting features of the decoders are used, a single "consist address", with many advantages

As January 2019, only universal / "old style" consisting is supported, meaning in assistance from the throttle and command station. First support was just before Christmas 2016.

To be clear, if you want advanced consisting, you have to program all the individual CV's by hand, and it's a dangerous thing to change CV's that set the loco address, besides being a pain in the butt.

I hope Zimo will see the light as other advanced systems have, and support advanced consisting. The overhead of universal consisting can be a problem in large layouts or with many locos in the consist, and the advanced features (making the sounds come from the lead loco automatically in advanced consisting) are well known and that is why advanced consisting is part of the NMRA specification and supported in virtually all DCC decoders.

Using universal (old style) consisting on the MX10 / MX32

Notes:

• The idea is you need all the locos in the consist to be available in LoR (Loco Recall) before consisting.
• When completed, locos in a consist will marked LoR with "Tx" where x is the group number 1-9.
• The yellow triangles indicate direction of the individual locos in a consist, point up is forwards, and point down is reverse.
• Be VERY AWARE that there are still bugs in the firmware, and it may "un-reverse" the direction of a loco running in the opposite direction, pay attention to the yello triangles!

How to Consist:

Again: You need to be sure the locos you wish to consist are "in" the MX32 "LoR" (LOco Recall) list., Remember you get there from the main running screen, not from the "A" screen, which only shows you the list of locos in the database. (LoR is the local recall list for the cab)

You should see all of the locos you want there. If all the locos you want for the consist are not there, or is already turquoise in color, it/they is not available (you should either them, or use the Object Database to "bring" them into the local handset's LoR).

In this example we will consist locos 2000 through 2003 and the last loco will be running backwards in the consist, a typical EMD F3 ABBA consist.

Below, you can see all locos from the LoR screen, and they are green (available).

Next use the scroll wheel to go to a loco, and press the T/P key. The letter "T" will appear, along with 2 asterisks "*", note you have 3 seconds to make an entry here.

Now, within 3 seconds from pressing the TP, you enter a number for the consist number (1 through 9 I believe), this sets the loco as a member of a Traction group (European for consist)

Here I enter "1" for the Traction/consist 1

After pressing the number key (I used one) the loco is now marked as in consist T1., BUT, if you dont add a second member to the consist within 5 seconds, the "T1" disappears!

OK, now select the rest of the locos and add them to the consist in the same manner at your leisure.

Note that if you press the R (reverse) button just before pressing the number key for the traction group, that loco's direction will be reversed, this is not in the manual, nor does the triangle reverse direction until after your press a number key.

Don't worry if you did not get a loco in the reversed direction, you can edit later.

But in our case, we are more interested in the directions of the locos, since we need the last loco to be running backwards (EMD F3 ABBA consist).

So go to Loco Recall again, and scroll to the loco to be reversed (in this case 2003)

You can see from the triangles that all the locos are going in the same direction.

Now press the TP key, and you get a menu.

Do not hit the reverse button! This reverses all locos in the Consist (why?)

Press the A key and that loco will reverse:

Now Escape out with the E key.

To operate the consist, you can select any of the locos in the consist when controlling speed and direction.

When operating any loco in a consist, you will see "Tx" after the loco number, where x is is the consist number.

To control functions, you need to select the loco you wish for bell, whistle, etc, the system does not change which loco gets function messages if you reverse direction (that SHOULD be added, but I suspect that then the concept of front/middle/last locos would have to be added, just like NCE does.

I'll have more on the speed setting of the individual locos later, looks straightforward, and I would strongly suggest speed matching all your locos in the first place.

Notice also that you can enable the East / West in addition to the Forwards / Backwards, using the shift and the direction button, and you will also see another triangle

forwards / backwards is the up and down pointing triangles

East / West is the left/right triangles.

Issues / bugs / deviation from manual:

Using the "TP" popup menu in LoR will not let you remove a loco from a consist... pressing "C" in the LoR on a member of a consist will remove it from the consist.

To take over a consist from another MX32, it will work properly with a consist that has reversed locos, BUT the yellow triangles will not reflect the reversed loco. In addition, taking the consist "back" to the original MX32 will again incorrectly report the reversed loco.

Using advanced consisting on the MX10 & MX32

Not implemented as of 2022.03.29 - one can only hope