Dale, short of regulating the LEDs as you do, it is still not very difficult to wire double pickups to a single set of lamps or LEDs so that they cannot power the train across the gap, yet still keep the lights on over breaks in the center rail. The trick is to rectify the track voltage, then combine the DC to power all the lamps. This can be done half-wave or full-wave. For half-wave, all that you need is a single diode in series with each pickup. The RMS voltage will be reduced by about 30 percent. If you don't want to exploit this to increase lamp life, you can substitute lower-voltage lamps. For full-wave, two bridge rectifiers will do the job, although, since the diodes on the return side are doubled, the circuit could be built up from 6 individual diodes, not 8. The RMS voltage remains virtually unchanged.
However, if you are rectifying the lighting voltage anyway, you might as well put in a capacitor, which is what I do. This does a better job of eliminating flicker, which can still happen with two pickups. In fact, I have removed the second pickup on some MTH cars that had particularly stiff ones, just to get easier rolling. A capacitor big enough to power the lamps through the gaps will raise the voltage by about 40 percent.
Bob Nelson
TCA#09-63805
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