Programming A Walthers Proto SW900 With ESU LokSound

I found a Walthers Proto Lehigh Valley SW900 with ESU LokSound at a good price, which I like a lot.

A number of manufacturers seem to be settling on LokSound. There are two areas of incompatibility between LokSound and other makers. Up to now, most had focused on F9 as engine start/mute. LokSound uses F8, which wouldn't be too much of a problem, except LokSound then adds a feature called "drive hold" for F9, which locks the loco into its current speed step setting but allows the user to change the apparent speed of the motor via the controller knob. But if you forget ESU engine start is F8 and press F9 when the loco is at speed step 0, this will keep the loco from moving until you remember that you goofed and press F9 again to release it.

The other feature I'm less enthusiastic about is the "prime mover delay" available on full-featured LokSound decoders (but not the economy LokSound decoders on Walthers Mainline locos). In additioon to normal momentum from CVs 3 and 4, this adds an additional acceleration delay while the sound of the prime mover spools up in the decoder.

Since I've never driven a prototype diesel, I don't know how much this additional throttle delay actually reflects the prototype. The main problem I see from a model perspective is that this makes a loco equipped with an ESU LokSound decoder incompatible for consisting with locos that have decoders from other manufacturers, since the ESU equipped loco won't accelerate as quickly as the others -- and that would even include Walthers Mainline locos with the economy LokSound decoder.

The way to fix this is simply to change CV 124 to 16 to eliminate the prime mover delay. Then the model will accelerate compatibly with other locos.