Retiring all my HO trains from the layout. In favor of O gauge. . Would like to have a DCC Ho engine just run from point to point and reverse.to take up space on the platform. Ist this doable with standard Bachman HO Track.? What do I need .? Reversing track? Switches? Help !!! I am a neophete to all this fun.
Do you mean a shuttle, like a trolley that reverses automatically and goes backwards the other way? Or do you mean a train that goes through a reverse loop and keeps going straight ahead but in the other direction?
There are devices that will do the trolley shuttle, but they only work in DC.
The reverse loops can be done with DCC, and you can automatically control the turnout positions, too.
You should be able to do either with Bachman track.
By the way, welcome to the forums. As new member, you will be moderated for a few posts to make sure you're not a bot of some sort.
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.
Tam Valley has a DCC shuttle device that can do all sorts of things with DCC locos.
--Randy
Modeling the Reading Railroad in the 1950's
Visit my web site at www.readingeastpenn.com for construction updates, DCC Info, and more.
Circuitron sells a kit at a reasonable price. DC only. We installed one at the club but it was a bit of a hassle to get it working properly. Tinkering is involved... Otherwise, it works great.
Simon
That discontinued Tam Valley device would have been perfect for a re-vamped subway, running point-to-point in forward reverse mode. It appeared, though, that they had a lot of trouble with them and finally dropped the product.
I hope someone else makes something like this, but I wouldn't hold my breath.
Sounds like it was more like PEBCAK errors driving him nuts. I thought the manual explained the setup pretty well, but then, not everyone can read.
Remember when it first appeared, there was another name - something like "aka the Professor Quieter" or something - I think the whole thing was built as a response to a challenge by a very active poster on another forum.
As an alternative, it may not be too difficult to take the DCC++ DIY thing and add some code to do what this did. Maybe a second Arduino to avoid code issues with the DCC packet generation. Would be pretty simple, actually, some inputs to read the block sensors, and just have it send commands to the DCC++ board based on that setting whatever loco address you were using to either go forward at a certain speed step, reverse at a certain speed step, or stop. No need to calculate DCC packets, the DCC++ system handles that for you.
Could probably do the same with an Arduino and a WiFi interface, if you already have a WiFi interface to the DCC system. You would generate WiThrottle protocol commands to drive the loco, with the same inputs hooked up to the block sensors.
If the engine will only be doing some back and forth, I would just pull out the decoder. But if the decoder works in DC, it should work with the circuitron device in DC mode.