Yesterday I got a old, but factory sealed, undecorated Bachman Spectrum GP-35 cheap.
Before I went to the trouble and expense of converting it to DCC, I wanted to run it to see if it was worth the project. Anyway, last night as I was going through the process of setting up my DCC, I ran the Geep for about a half hour.
Now that I am a DCC ramrod myself, I wonder what I will do next time.
Since I only have 6 DCC/Sound equipped locomotives my test track is DC .The DC test track is far more important to me due to the fact the club I am a member of uses DC and will more then likely never convert to DCC.
I use a loop of old Hornby track and a spare power pack to test locos under DC - also handy for breaking in new power before adding a decoder. Might be a good use for those cheap Bachmann and Lifelike train sets as you’d only be using the track and power supply, which should be ok for testing.
I have a test track that is 4’ long,at the end of the track I have an bumper,This is mounted on a 1"X4" that is as stright as an arrow.At the outher end I have a DPDT switch to switch from DCC to DC for testing,I have an MRC railpower 1370 to run this sit up. right next to it is a small peace of track (12"s) with an one ohm restor on one rail,this is for incodeing.works just fine.LIKE they say ; keep it simple and home made.
JIM
I suppose I could break out my EZ Track if I wanted to make a DC test track. For now if I really need to test with DC, I just block the loco up and use clip leads off the DC pack. To run on the track, I’ll just run under address 00, it won’t hurt the typical Atlas/Kato/P2K/Athearn/Bachmann locos, especially if you keep it moving. Don’t sit a DC loco on DCC track and then get distracted for a couple of hours. That could be bad.
I’m disabling DC conversion on the decoders that have it when I program them, so the only place to test my DCC locos is on the actual layout.
–Randy
Randy, why are you disabling dc conversion, is it not adviseable to have enabled?
Ken.
It seems to prevent runaways. Sometimes when the power comes back up after a short the signal isn’t entirely stable and the decoder misinterprets this as no DCC and goes into analog conversion. Or something like that - I don’t fully buy that explanation as thinking it was analog alone isn’t enough to make the loco move, you’d need the zero bits to be stretched one way or the other as well. Although what I see possibly happening is that the H-bridge gets locked open and the direction is just arbitrary, possibly based on the last direction that decoder was running. In analog conversion that’s what happens,the motor driver H-bridge circuit gets locked open to pass track voltage to the motor with only a couple of diode drops worth of voltage loss. If the decoder does that THEN switches to DCC, well, you’ve got the equivalent of full speed voltage to the motor, so off it goes. Disabling analog conversion should prevent that, and since the only other places I’d potentially operate my equipment all have DCC, I won’t miss it.
–Randy
Well here’s what I did…it sounds complicated but it’s really not.
My layout was originally DC. When I installed the DCC system, I left the DC throttle attached (to provide turnout control) and added a selector switch to allow mainline power to be DC or DCC…Pretty simple. That was the first step. Then I isolated a spur from the mainline and added a second toggle switch. I ran feeders from mainline power to one side and from the program track feeders on the DCC power supply to the other side, then to the isolated spur.
So…what I have is…
If DC is selected on the first toggle, and Mainline power is selected on the second, the entire layout, including the test track is DC.
If DCC is selected on the first and Mainline power on the second, the entire layout including test track is DCC full power.
If DCC is selected on the first and Program Track on the second, the layout minus the test track is DCC full power, and the test track is on programming (reduced) power.
With limited space in my garage, I can test a loco and wring it out on DC, then plop in a decoder and program it, and go to DCC all on the same track. And it took all of 20 minutes to do the wiring once all the pieces were together.
Dan