Model animation—bringing models to life—adds enormously to the interest and enjoyment of any layout or individual model!  Recently a fellow modeler (George hohon3) asked if there was a simpler and cheaper way to have flicker free car lighting in his passenger cars, without expensive keep-alive circuitry. I gave him some solutions already known in the hobby, but these were not satisfying him, nor me. I even referred him to the battery KOAS article in the November 2014 issue of MRH – but no, he wanted something simpler.

1st of all they really should add a help topic choice for I am sure it would be well used.

2nd of all my problem.

       The locomotive in question is an all metal engine with pickups in the tender I am not sure if it is shorting but it sparks as it goes around and it stops and starts. Do you think it is something with the tender wheels? I will hopefully get pictures up soon.

Ok, here's my dilemma: 

Still running DC.. 1 block - 1 engine operation on a small layout…

I recently installed a Micro Engineering turnout. Unbeknownst to me, the through track of the Left turnout, leading to a spur, is dead after the frog. The frog is double gapped on both sides of the frog. I have feeders soldered to the tail track that provide power to the through track and diverting track. There are also two feeds on the other side of the diverting track. Please see diagram:

I am genuinely frustrated with the performance of a few of my locomotives around my turnouts and I really want to try TCS Keep Alive's with them.

The problem is that the RailPro is not natively KA friendly.

As I understand it, if I would simply wire the KA to the power leads, it would work one way, but if the power was reversed (loco turned) then the KA will burn out.

Reading about KA's here: https://sites.google.com/site/markgurries/home/decoders/keep-alive-compa...