Just a general question, out of curiosity-- how many folks here build in Emergency Stop / All Stop buttons into their layouts? And if you do, do you just make one or do you create an emergency stop bus and place conveniently located buttons around the layout?
If you use DCC its probably already on the controller.
For stopping a train instantly at any given location I just turn off that particular block. For stopping all the trains at once I turn off the Zephyr’s power. Works every time.
Every DCC controller I have seen except the EasyDCC main console has an emergency stop button, and the Cooler Crawler DC throttles have one.
The reason I ask is because I have DCC (a NCE PowerhousePro) and the other day I was running a loco and flipping through one of the menus on the controller (cab) and right at the most awkward moment I had a derail and needed to cut the power pronto-- I hit the BRS (big red switch) and NOTHING happened !!! I hit the program button to quickly back out of the menu and THEN the big red button stopped the train (which had basically created a folded-accordian mess by that time)
While my present “layout” is only temporary-- track & roadbed pinned down to pink foam so no damage done-- it got me thinking about what could have happened had it been my “real” layout or rolling toward the end of the line and the 1,000 foot cliff… ???
You can install a simple toggle switch in line between the controller and the track. Flip it and ALL power is cut no matter what.
Yes, that’s probably what I’ll do-- or else put some big mushroom switches around the layout where they’re accessible. I want to be able to kill power to the track and be certain everything stops. With DCC it hadn’t occurred to me that the emergency stop button could be preempted. Live and learn 
The Lenz throttles have an all-stop button. It does not kill power; it just stops the trains. When you press it, the display tells you that F0 (as I recall) will kill power. Otherwise, pressing all-stop again will start the trains running.
The instructions for the Lenz control bus indicate a simple addition for emergency stop. All you need is a pushbutton to momentarily connect two wires on the control bus. I haven’t tried this myself yet, but once again, it’s on the list. This would be useful if you were “railfanning” and didn’t have your throttle in hand. I’m not sure if this is a power-off or just a stop.
Lenz, by the way, allows you to manipulate throttle settings for the trains while in all-stop mode. So, if you see a cornfield meet about to happen, you can stop all the trains, set the speed on one or both of the ones in trouble to zero, and then resume running everything else.
When I wired my layout, I ran a fused home run from my home service panel to a master switch under my control panel. Flipping this switch cuts all power to the layout; throttles, lights, everything. If you’re not an electrician, have a licensed electrician run it for you. Or you could keep a quarter in your pocket. When the need to kill the power arose, lay the quarter on the rails if you’re away from the master cut-off.
I’m capable of doing the wiring no prob. And I’ll probably just arrange it to kill track power. Although thinking it through a little more, I’ll have to do something that spans power districts so that will complicate things just a little.
If what you say is true, I would call that a design flaw. I can tell you that my DT400 emergency button works in all modes…as it should. Even so, a quick reach to the master switch on the base station should have power cut to the tracks in a split second.
-Crandell
From Page 26 of your Powerhouse Pro manual:
EMERGENCY STOP
Pressing EMERGENCY STOP once will stop the active loco/consist for this Cab only.Speed will be immediately set to zero (no momentum). Loco is restarted by changing the speed step or direction. Pressing EMERGENCY STOP three times in succession will bring the entire layout to a stop by shutting off track power. “LAYOUT STOPPED!” will be displayed and is cleared by pressing the ENTER key. Only the Cab that executed the Emergency Stop can clear it. Each Loco or Consist can now be restarted by sending it a command, such as a speed increase or decrease, or by toggling a function.
I would try the Emergency Stop again by running a loco and testing it. If it fails to work as stated above, a call to NCE is next in line. I have used the Emergency Stop and it works as stated on my layout.
Don Z.
True, assuming you’re near the base station and can reach the switch.
Yes, thanks. I did read that section of the manual both before and after the incident. And I had tested the emergency stop feature a number of times and had never had it fail to work before. But as I said, I was running a train and while it was running, in the middle of flipping through menus-- its possible I was about to enter something and it was waiting for input-- whatever it was, in that moment I needed the emergency stop button RIGHT NOW and it wouldn’t work.
Did you press the button 3 times ? I just tried it on my ProCab while paging thru the menu and it worked perfectly.
BTW, this topic should have been posted in DCC and Electronics.
There are a couple things to consider when relying on an Emergency Stop button. The first thing is that the Digitrax Zephyr does not support the global emergency stop(you can , however, turn off track power from the throttle). The other thing is the AthearnN-Scale Challenger does not support the global emergency stop( I don’t know if there are any other engines with this bug or not). I am not sure if Lenz does the Emergency Stop the same way or not, but what Digitrax does(other than the Zephyr) is send an emergency stop command to the broadcast address(short address 0). Every decoder is supposed to respond to this and immediately stop, but the Challenger just keeps on going at it’s last speed setting, and you loose control of it until you bring the layout out of emergency stop.
Yes, I pressed it three times.
And then three times more.
It just didn’t work.
I just duplicated the issue, it really does happen.
With the NCE Powerhouse Pro, get a loco moving down the track (make it go slow so you won’t risk anything).
Then select another loco to program on the main and go into motor settings (perhaps some other submenu would work too, but I tried a couple others that did not exhibit the issue and the motor one did)
Go through the settings and linger on the entering of a value (e.g. Accelleration: ____) and at that point hit the emergency stop. It won’t respond.
I’ve tried it several times now, I can make it happen repeatedly and on command.
Forgive me for pointing this out, but in your original post, you didn’t tell us you had pulled up a different locomotive while letting the first one run loose. You stated:
“The reason I ask is because I have DCC (a NCE PowerhousePro) and the other day I was running a loco and flipping through one of the menus on the controller (cab) and right at the most awkward moment I had a derail and needed to cut the power pronto-- I hit the BRS (big red switch) and NOTHING happened !!! I hit the program button to quickly back out of the menu and THEN the big red button stopped the train (which had basically created a folded-accordian mess by that time)”
The original scenario is totally different. Since you recalled another locomotive to play with the programming while the original is running without control or communication, it won’t stop if you hit the emergency stop once. Everything should halt if you press the button 3 times. As I stated earlier, if the layout doesn’t shut down after pressing the E-Stop 3 times, you need to call NCE to determine if you have a faulty throttle.
Providing all of the pertinent information makes it much easier for us to help you troubleshoot the problem.
Don Z.
Forgive me for pointing this out but in my ORIGINAL post I just simply asked if anybody put emergency stop buttons on their layouts…
However, you are cor