I have a dcs51 power pack by digitrax & I think it might be biting the dust. The last three engines i purchased with dcc & sound, Im having trouble programing them. The zepher is about 8 years old or older. Besides the programing issue , the proto engine started not to respond to my commands like, increase the speed. The engines im having trouble with are intermountain & proto. I tried resetting the pack , that didnt help. Could it be that some of the components inside the zepher are wearing out? three engines cant be all bad cause they are new. Any ideas anyone?
How much of a load are you putting on it? The DCS51 is rated at 3 amps, which should support a medium-sized layout.
Are you connecting structure lighting, street lamps and such to it? Do you have a lot of sound engines idling? How about passenger cars with incandescent lamps? All of these can add to the load.
And yes, thing do fail. I use a Lenz system, so I'm only speaking in general terms.
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.
I'm wondering about a bad electrical connection. Somewhere.
Properly designed (!) electronics don't "wear out".
One thing to try is to connect your electronics to a strip of flex track with some clip leads and try running trains, etc. Does that help?
Ed
You said you reset the pack. Did you reset the decoders?
By the way, you have a DCC controller, not a power pack which is DC.
Connect your voltmeter on AC section to the controller output terminals. Connect the meter to suspected parts of the layout. Compare readings but make sure a loco is in the section you are measuring. The absolute reading not very important but look for lower voltage at spots on the layout. As an example, my NCE Power Cab shows about 13.6 vac at the output of the controller. If I had an issue, I would probe the layout toward the loco and look for a voltage drop.
Rich
If you ever fall over in public, pick yourself up and say “sorry it’s been a while since I inhabited a body.” And just walk away.
Sound decoders are notoriously difficult to program at times.
This is because some brands (not all) take more power than the programming track puts out for the decoder to even turn on. (Lengthy reason as to why, this is the short version...)
And, on the layout not running correctly, it could be a power/voltage drop issue, or it could be a overloading issue. (Or, it might be a part going bad...)
How many feeders, and how far apart are they?
How many sound equiped trains at once?
Any other electrical loads?
Way too many variables here...
And, I use Digitrax myself, but the updated Zephyr X-tra. (And a DT402 Throttle, as well as a Loco-buffer II for Decoder-Pro access.) They have good stuff, but, parts do eventually wear out sometimes. I just don't have enough info here to say either way...
Ricky W.
HO scale Proto-freelancer.
My Railroad rules:
1: It's my railroad, my rules.
2: It's for having fun and enjoyment.
3: Any objections, consult above rules.
Well,I dont run but one train at a time,I dont have lights on the layout & I use to not have this problem with programing my engines. One engine I put on the mainline & it sped up when I turned the light on. I have plenty of feeders and my rail joints are soldered.
the old train man One engine I put on the mainline & it sped up when I turned the light on.
One engine I put on the mainline & it sped up when I turned the light on.
Does that happen every time you put it on the mainline?
Does that happen when you put it on the flex track, as I mentioned above?
Does that happen when you put that locomotive on someone else's layout?
Ed, It happens every time I put that engine on the mainline. I have not tried it on another layout. Yesterday I was running an engine on the mainline & I turned the speed down but the engine kept on going at its present speed,I had to turn the power off to stop it. Also I cant get several of my engines to program a new address.
I found the problem. I called intermountain trains & they walked me thru how to program my engines using cv1. I tried it & it works. I also reset my zepher & that helped solve the problems I was having,Thanks for all the help