I’m talking 1960s, 7mm 0 Gauge and a lot of the switches either came out of Lancaster Bombers or were marked “GPO” with the King’s crown.
In those days you didn’t need to simulate “real train feel”, the controls were massive, could smoke on their own and could give you a 12volt DC clout if you didn’t watch out.
That said… the thread on running two locos on one track has reminded me that my Dad’s and other layouts used to be wired for 12volt DC but with a 24volt DC lamp (bulb) in the circuit to protect against overloads and shorts. If anything went wrong the lamp lit up like the sun and nothing went bang. This tended to get replaced by cut-out trip switches in off-the-shelf controllers (made by H&M IIRC). The “new” controllers were small, light and all the good things but all you knew was that something had blown the circuit.
You may gather that I am not an electrical wizard. I never even got into feedback control or… was it “inertia”…?
I’m just wondering whether a ballast system of protection can still be used with all the modern whizzo-technical stuff and, if so, how it would be done?
TIA
Hey… I just thought… I’m talking about before the Gulf of Tonkin Incident…
Am I getting old? [%-)]