Track and electrical/DCC
Led indicators for Kato unitrack turnouts?
Hello All,
I need a little direction on this,
What I am trying to do is add a red and green LED for my HO Kato unitrack turnouts that are electally controlled.
Kato just uses a pulse to energize a coil in the switch. Unlike Atlas it just uses a single coil and reverses the polarity to the coil to change directions.
I think a "latching relay" type circuit would do the trick and I believe it can be done with a couple NPN transistors.
SoundTraxx Econami Availability
Has anyone heard what the status is or the availability of Econami decoders? My LHS cannot get any, my Internet sources say that they are out of stock due to a component shortage and one dealer said his orders have been denied.
SoundTraxx is not responding to my Tweets, so I'm taking this to MRH, maybe they monitor this site. What's the scoop? I standardized on them, having been buying them regularly as budget allows and now I'm stuck in my sound conversion project.
We need a switch machine with more contacts
Our club has been using Tortoise switch machines on a HO scale yard. There are 2 pair (3 tracks) of Tortoises that switch the electricity between seperate power packs. We have been using the 2 internal sets of Tortoise contacts to switch the positive rail and to energize the frog. The negative rails have been wired in common. We now want to seperate the common rails with another set of contacts to be able to switch the negative rails between the power packs.
same DCC address to two turnouts?
Hi,
I was wondering what would you recommend for something like a simple run-around section like this:
So far I gave all turnouts individual addresses but it struck me as a waste of buttons and maybe of logic. If both turnouts are switched in sync with a single address, wouldn't it make it easier to operate? Are there any downsides of this that I don't see?
Three throw stub turnout
I am looking for suggestions on how to operate a three throw stub switch, either by ground throw or switch machine.
Power source for Digitrax Loconet units
The Digitrax UP5, BDL168, DS64, SE8C, LNW1, UR90, UR91 and PM42 all require a 300 mA 14 V DC input. Instead of using several Digitrax PS14 or equivalent adapters, is it possible to feed all these units from one transformer delivering 14 V DC?
I've tried to ask this on the Digitrax user forum, but get one yes and one no as answers. Has anyoune tried this out?
Turnout Switch Template
Maybe this has already been posted a lot on here but it's one thing I hadn't looked up before doing so figured I'd share.
"How much sound"? in a specific DCC consist?
Hi all,
While working on my new layout i will slowly be adding DCC to several DC locomotives on my fleet. I am having some thoughts and questions with respect to "how much sound" should i have in a particular consist.
The thoughts:
The consist will be having Genesis F units' for passenger service in ABBBA and AABBA setups.
The middle B unit on the first consist is going to be a dummy unit in the ABBBA consist.
I am thinking of having Sound decoders on the A units, motor only on the B units.
problem finding JMRI
Hi guys,
ive been looking at assembling a dcc++ base to be able to program and test my motive power and to just generally play with until i get a running section complete on my new layout. i already have an uno and ordering the motor sheid this weekend. the problem im having is that i cant seem to find a working link to download JMRI. ive used 3 different browsers and every link seems to be saying site not found. any ideas? thanks
Epic keepalive failure
Just in case somebody else thinks about adding a diy keepalive to a loco, please take note of how catastrophically bad things can get:
Note to self, google for "parallel tantalum capacitors", hit I'm Feeling Lucky, read on...
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