while I was puttering about online I found the following item, which really caught my interest. It seems to be a capacitor that wires inline with a locomotive’s decoder. Anybody ever try one of these (or try to make one? [:D] )
http://www.railway-models.co.uk/1422_1_1794169.html
http://www.tonystrains.com/technews/lz-powermod-rev.htm
Ray
It is a viable solution - IF you use a decoder designed to use it. The capacitor cannot be placed across the decoder input from the rails - if it’s large enough to do much good, it harms the DCC command signaling. Putting the capacitor across the decoder output to the motor will smooth the pulses and take away from slow speed running capability. Thre may be some limited ability to bridge dead spots here.
For the solution to be viable, the capacitor must be on a separate circuit from the decoder, and the decoder circuitry isolates the capacitor from the decoder input. Therefore, the decoder must be designed to use a large capacitor in this manner, like the Lenz Gold.
yours in powering
Fred Wright
I was surprised at the small size of the cap unit. Maybe soon all the major decoder players will have something similar. I like it!
Terry[8D]
Hypotetically, it is possible to do this with any decider. But you would need a rectifier, a super cap, and an nor gate transistor capable of handling 1 amp of current. You would tie the rails to each leg of the or transistor. The source side would be connected to the super cap drain and the negative to the pickup on the decoder. When the power drops on both rails, then the transistor will allow the power from the cap to drain into the leads on the decoder.
From what I understand however, the dedicated circuits in the decoder are much more efficient at converting the DCC AC signall to DC. So having it built in to the decoder would be a more efficient solution.