An older die cast Mikado, made I believe by Mantua, has just received a new lease on life thanks to a Bachmann motor salvaged from a damaged F40PH.



There is more information on this remotoring job at this link:

http://members.shaw.ca/the.trainman/Mantua-mike/

And if anyone has any information about the sound system in this locomotive, I would really appreciate hearing from them.  I have never seen one before, nor have I been able to find a reference to one.  Maybe it isn't Mantua? 

Last October, on the old board, Stan Ames  told us about a new decoder that worked in spite of dirty and/or corroded track.  It even worked, he said, with tape over the rails.  Based on what Stan said, I ordered one of these decoders, specifically a Lenz Gold Maxi, for further testing.  With my garden railroad under 3 to 4 feet of snow, I had to wait until today to properly test it.  And test it I did, at our local model railroad show, before many members of the model railroad fraternity and some members of the public.

The demonstration was simple.  One Aristo-Craft Little Critter locomotive fitted with one Lenz Gold Maxi Decoder running on one five foot section of brass rail with tape over both rails on a one foot section in the middle.  The decoder requires rechargeable batteries so I used 3 NiMH portable telephone batteries, each rated at 3.6 volts 320 mAh.  A switch was installed in series with the batteries so that they could be turned on and off, and a pair of 5.6 volt zener diodes were installed in series across the batteries to prevent excessive charging voltage.  Due to the nature of the test and the small investment in batteries, no current regulation was used.

The first test consisted of running the locomotive along the bare brass track, over the tape insulated section, and back onto the bare brass.  This simple test created a sensation among experienced model railroaders, particularly as the locomotive ran equally smoothly and at the same speed both on and off the tape.  The concept of battery backup is simple, but to see it operating so smoothly is amazing, even to those of us in the electronics field.

The second test was to run the locomotive back onto the tape, this time stopping, reversing, starting, stopping, again reversing, all while on the tape, then accelerating quickly off the tape.  All of the DCC users and many of the astute dc users immediately realized for themselves the significance of this second test - that the DCC signals were being picked up right through the tape.

Most of the observers accepted that technology had solved the age-old problem of dirty track.  A few wanted to know how this was possible.  These were mostly technical people in the electronics field, but included a nuclear physicist and a retired university professor.

Not surprisingly, a number of members of the general public who had come to the show to see some trains run saw nothing new or exciting in these tests - all they saw was a knob being turned and a locomotive running as a result.

There were some very interesting questions raised.  The most common were what about H0 and what about N scale.  (The answer was that both the Lenz Gold JST for H0 and the Lenz Gold Mini for N scale work with capacitors to create "electronic flywheels" to help the locomotives get over the dirty spots.)  Other questions included how big should the batteries be (The answer was that it depends on the ratio between dirty and clean track.  With mostly clean track, the battery can be small, just big enough to meet the current demand.  If the track were 100% dirty, then you would need a battery big enough to meet the ampere hour demand.)  And a related question was how much of the track could be covered with tape and the locomotive still work (the answer would seem to be ALL OF IT.)

The answers to the last two questions lead me to speculate on a whole new way of operating trains, one perhaps not even foreseen by Lenz themselves.  That would be to purposely prevent the decoder from picking any power from the track by isolating the decoder from the wheels with capacitors.  This would force the locomotive to rely completely on the batteries for power, just as battery powered trains already do.  The downside of this would be having to charge and maintain batteries.  The advantage of this would be that locomotives could be fitted with sophisticated DCC decoders at a fraction of the cost of radio receivers plus auxiliary function control modules.  Operation would not require track cleaning, which many find a nuisance.  And as a bonus, this type of operation would not require any DCC boosters as the power would be supplied by batteries, not by the rails.  The control for a typical backyard railway could then be a low cost, introductory level DCC command station/throttle/low lever booster unit such as a Zephyr or a Bachmann E-Z Command.  I am sure this would have no appeal on huge layouts where you must walk along with your train, but would be ideal for the average, suburban backyard sized layout that can be controlled from the patio while sipping a cool one and listening to the burgers sizzle.  Please keep in mind that this mode of operation is only speculation at this time.  It will be a couple of months before the snow is gone from my outdoor layout and I can start on testing this concept.

I tried to enter a consist address into CV19 of the decoder in a DCC On Board GP-40, but was unsuccessful.  Yet the List of Supported CV's at http://www.bachmanntrains.com/home-usa/ez/1_Amp_Decoder_Instr.pdf seems to indicate that CV19 is supported.  Has anyone else tried decoder assisted consisting (otherwise known as Advanced Consisting) with Bachmann decoders, either pre installed of installed after sales?  What was the result?

You go away for a few days and when you come back, your house is gone.

You go away for a few days and when you come back, your family is gone and have not left a forwarding address.

You go away for a few days and when you come back, your favorite board has radically changed.

My house is still here.  My family is still here.  And I like the new board.  I hope the only thing gone is the spam.

On the old board, I mentioned a better battery charger specifically for runing Sierra sound on DCC.  This circuit can charge a battery in any state between completely dead to fully charged without frying the battery with excessive current or overcharging it with too much voltage, whether the sound system is turned on or not and whether the locomotive is running or not.  This allows the sound system to be run indefinitely, even with the locomotive sitting still.  I often use this feature to keep a diesel idling in the engine house when it is not in use on the road.

Because of requests for this circuit, I have uploaded details to our Saskatoon Railroad Modellers' mirror website.  It can be seen at:

http://members.shaw.ca/SaskRailMirror/dcc/Sierra-battery-charger/index.html

(Once our regular website has some maintenance done on it, the article will be posted in the DCC section of that site.)

Jim Banner