When I was a kid I had a little HO 4 wheel diesel switcher that acted the same way. It ran great great on DC and went absolutely ape on AC. I found this out when one of the power packs on my HO/OO layout blew out. (This was in '68) I pulled out the transformer for my Lionel Double Diesel set that I had gotten for Christmas in '65 and hooked it up. As soon as I connected the track wires to it, the little loco took off like a shot and flew off the first curve. I hadn't seen one do that before and have seen only a couple do it since, and it's always been really old open frame motors that have done this.
Dr. Frankendiesel aka Scott Running BearSpace Mouse for president!15 year veteran fire fighterCollector of Apple //e'sRunning Bear EnterprisesHistory Channel Club life member.beatus homo qui invenit sapientiam
Randy and Jeff, Thanks for the responses. It sounds like I shoud try a different motor. The fact that it runs so well on DC still seems so strange. When it runs on DCC it runs full speed. That also seems strange. I wonder if there is some wiring mistake I could have made that could do this. Yet, if the wiring is OK for DC, what is there about DCC that is so different? Just remotoring might be the easy answer, but I am facinated by problem itself.
Some old DC motors will move a bit on AC but it will be just a crawl. Also the motor will smoke at the same time in most those cases. This is not a good motor to be running analog on DCC.
If with address 00 set to speed 0, this loco moves? That would indicate that it either has some sort of circuitry between the track and motor - perhaps a lighting circuit? - or there is a problem with the motor. With no other locos running and address 0 set to speed 0 the waveform is almost perfectly balanced - unless something has failed in your booster, but you'd notice that with DCC locos as well. All I would expect if you set a DC motor on the track at that point would be for it to buzz and if left too long start to smoke. If it moves, even though it appears to work fine on DC power, there has to be something wrong. If it's really old, perhaps the magnet has lost most of its power, or there may be an open winding - though the odds of that aren't too great, you'd have to see it at least SOME of the time when trying it with straight DC - it wouldn't self start.
--Randy
Modeling the Reading Railroad in the 1950's
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Here is the problem.
I have Digitrax DCC. I have run several DC engines on 00 with no problem. My DCC engines are running normally.
I put an old open frame engine on the track and it does not act right. It either runs regardless of throttle or address settings, or smokes. It does run fine on the bench with DC.
Because I have never seen anything like this, I need some suggestions.