I did a test with two of my powered N-Scale units to see if I would encounter any problems relating to units with differing speeds.
Result: No problem.
I connected to units, we’ll say one running at “normal” speed and one running slightly slower. I put the faster of the two units at the front and then switched up. In both cases the power load was almost identical (not enough of a difference to even mention.)
I would still prefer to have the mfg’s come out with unpowered versions of their new locos. I think those “collectors” that simply like to display locos would be very appreciative of the gesture too, not to mention a smaller price tag sans the motors.
Thanks again to everyone who posted suggestions and advice. I appreciate the help very much.
I have pulled engines that kept freezing up with a good running engine, to sort of ‘force’ them to run, and it has not been a problem, even if the good engine was substantially faster than the bad one. When I have enough money to purchase more engines, I dream of the day that I can run several powered units together. However, I do have a dummy unit that I made from an engine that wore out. I just removed the motor and drive gears, and she runs like a dream! (If there is another engine running in tandem) Good luck![8D][tup]
The main question was when dummies aren’t available - what do you do?
I just depowered a bunch of Stewart F units. Powered sets of ABBA is just too much. I don’t want to spend my life doing DCC power curves trying to get them all to match, besides two powered Stewarts can pull much larger trains than any layout I run on can handle. Until the Superchief #47 BC set there were no Athearn dummies. For the Stewarts I just went to ebay and found some dummy chassies. Sold the powered chassies for more than I paid for the loco originally.
Oh yeah, almost forgot to answer the secondary questions. When one ends up with eight, nine, or ten sets of ABBA locomotives sitting around the locomotive terminal if they are all powered even a ten amp power supply has a hard time with them. So we cut back the unnecessary power or have to boost the power supply for the locomotive terminal to 20 amps. I don’t like welding thing when there is a short circuit. I suppose we could use one power supply for each track in the terminal, but…
Whenever I buy locomotives I always try to purchase two identical units with different road numbers for the “creeping” effect. The more powered locos you have the slower you can run the train. One unit might creep a little but usually just jerks along, but two or three units will give you that realistic smoooooth, sloooow start.
This is another reason why I’m still wiring my new layout with separate blocks even though I have a Digitrax Chief system - so I can park as many stationary locos as I want without worrying about power consumption.
one option not mentioned yet. You may be able to find a non-functioning unit for sale on E-bay for real cheap. That will give you the option of a dummy unit for little cost, (and no hypertension from hurting a perfectly good power unit).
Hmmm never heard that one before. I would say you need to work on each locomotive to make it creep by itself, or I guess it could just be dirty track or wheels.
You miss the point. We have many separate power blocks. About 10 for 100 amps total. The problem is when you park all of them in the same block. Which is why I said, I suppose we could make one power supply for each track in the locomotive facility, but to provide that much power just to have way overkill power is just silly.
So did you happen to read the posts and are you still laughing after reading them? It does happen. I was cranking around with 4,5,6 powered units MUed together and it suddenly dawned on me how stuipid it was. I’ve depowered about 1/4 my fleet.
Before we lost our club layout I was running my Stewart FT-ABBA set, all power, with around 65 cars and it ran great even with grades, and did some road switching too! Now that I have converted to DCC, I resurrected one of the dummy chassis and loaded it with sound, taking out the powered B unit. Bruce Petrarca did the install, 2 woofers and a tweeter on a Soundtraxx decoder. The other 3 units I used Digitrax DS163D and they run great. They even have the compensation pause between notches 4 and 5 as per the prototype.
I’ve tried this without success. How did he get shield the tweeter to not respond to the DCC frequency? It has nothing to do with my wiring as I can’t get the tweeter within two feet of the rail when it starts squeeking before I’ve connected it to anything. I know it is related to the DCC frequency because I can set the throttel to channel zero and make the speaker make different sounds. I’ve successfully added crossovers that make one speaker do highs and another the lows, but never a true “tweeter” speaker. I know one can get shielded magnet speakers but have never seen one even close enough to fit into a G-scale locomotive, let alone HO.
Of all the locos I have, only one was bought as a dummy. The other two are old athearns that finally just died. I removed the motor, drive shafts and worm gears as well as all the gears in the trucks, except the wheel gears. I put a block of floral clay in place of the motor to give it a little weight. They work very well as dummies.
Another use for a dummy is as a camera car. I’ve got a camera in one of my subway cars, but if I had another camera I’d put it in the nose of an F7A, and then run that as the lead of an AA or ABA MU. Between the camera itself and the battery or power supply, there just isn’t room to put one of these into an HO powered engine.
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QUOTE: Originally posted by Don Gibson
You have some stray RFI (Radio Frequncy Interference) bouncing around. The coils in your ‘teeter’ are picking it up, so it must be strong.
Take your tweeter and walk around your layout to find what’s transmitting RF and shouldn’t.
When a real railroad is running a multi-engine consist but they’re not pulling much and don’t need all that power, do they shut down some of the locomotives, dis-engage the drive train and just haul them around, or do they always run them all powered?
well, the 1:1 i saw yesterday had the second unit shut down. It was a NS GP38-2 (high hood, of course, long hood forward) pulling a SD40-2 and a lone boxcar.
I’ve also seen powermoves coming down from Erie of 10 or more brand new GE locos. Only the first couple engines were operating.