I gave my Orient Express train a run

Garden Railroading
1

I don’t know if many of you blokes know about my Golden Mountain train which is out of the same stable as the Orient Express

it is just three luxury LGB coaches pulled by my Mallet loco. Well Danny S had a day at his place over the weekend and we went down to Brisbane and participated; it was a good day and enjoyed by all.

But I had a small incident which I would not describe as a problem more the opposite.

My Mallet went round Danny’s track really well doing all the tings it should do and making all the sounds it should make. But every circuit nearly it would stop in the same place go through its cycle of opening the firebox door, shoveling coal in, shutting the door and a quick whistle and it was off again.

For the last eighteen months it has been running on MTS and this is the first time it has run on normal DC for all that time. My problem is it has never done this before and i really do not know why it does it; as i would like it to do it more often.

Does anyone have any ideas why?

Rgds Ian

2

Ian,
My guess is that the loco is factory set to do so on a continuous run when running on analog control. Neat feature. As for setting it to do so on DCC I have no idea. As you have mentioned in the past instructions are nearly non-existant. I will be curious to see how this works. Rgds eh…Brian.

3

You’re saying that’s a feature, not a bug?

Sorry, I’ve been in software for twentymumble years[C):-)]

4

Are there any magnets on your friends track?Could be a magnet triggering something in the loco as it is at the same spot every time.
Troy

5

LGB has those Sound Magnets.

They activate the wistle/bell on my mogul.

6

Most likely a bad turnout or just a couple of bad rail joiners. DC is much less tolerant of dirty track than MTS. The lower voltage you were running at caused the processor on the MTS decoder to reset and therefore go through the startup routine.

It is possible to make the loco behave this way by creating a DC stopping section. You will have to isolate a few feet of track and apply 24 volts DC to it, Then you have to use a track sensor, and feedback interface to reconnect the stopping section to the DCC signal to restart the loco.

B0B