Ok, It's 2 Differant Loco's, One Proto 1000, one Atlas Master, both work fine on my digitrax powered layout, but the proto 1000 loco is a friends, (Atlas mine, just to test) who doesn't have dcc. On DC they both will start (Sound and lights, each about a second long.) but then once they start to move, they will stutter (sound on/off/on/off), lights flash in time with the sound, as does movement. Once you get above half throttle they just shut off. I have tried reset, dc enabled, etc... Any ideas?
Ricky W.
HO scale Proto-freelancer.
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What DC controller is being used? It sounds to me like it is being overloaded by the sound decoders and its internal circuit breaker is turning on and off.
I know his is a bachmann controller, not sure how old, or which one, my old dc power pack is a bachmann spectrum one from early 2000's, it supplies 15VDC, 18 AC, 10VAMax Combined. I only have it to test new dc loco's after I upgraded to digitrax, but before it had run my 4X10 HO Layout with 2-3 loco's plus acc... Could they both be too small? When I tested both loco's on mine it was only thing hooked up to it....
And only one loco at a time...
The only way to know for sure is with a voltmeter (or light bulb) connected to the track. If the voltmeter reading jumps up and down or the light bulb goes on and off, the power pack is shutting down.
Another possibility would be to try a better, more powerful, power pack if you know someone you can borrow it from.
10VA is almost the same as saying 10 Watts of power output from the power pack, which may not be enough for a sound decoder, especially at our low track voltages.
A plain 10 Watt light bulb powered from your 110 Volt AC house wiring would probably not light at all if connected to the low-voltage DC output of a Bachmann power pack.
Ok, Thanks. I'll try that out with my old pack, if it's doing that, I'm almost positive my friends is too. And he wonders why I went to DCC...
Make sure the track is clean too.
Richard
What Richard said is correct. A dirty track will cause these symptoms. Sound DCC locos are particularly sensitive to dirty track as they use a lot of power.
PWM powerpacks are also not DCC friendly.
Don - Specializing in layout DC->DCC conversions
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DigitalGriffin What Richard said is correct. A dirty track will cause these symptoms. Sound DCC locos are particularly sensitive to dirty track as they use a lot of power. PWM powerpacks are also not DCC friendly.
It's not that they use a lot of power, it's that the DCC signal is very sensitive. It takes very little to corrupt the signal coming to the decoder.
It's possible that the older "cheapie" power packs don't have any fitering on the DC output. Without that filtering, tiny voltage spikes are present on the DC line which more than likely are causing the decoder to have fits !
Mark.
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