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 (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
Jim, Thanks! As usual, an informative post! Best, Jack