If you read MR or RMC you've probably seen the work of New York Central modeler Jim Six. Besides articles, his layout is used in some ads for the New York Central System Historical Society. In the most recent issue of the online "New York Central Modeler" he explains why he was changing his very nice HO layout from 1955 to 1943:
"Simply put, steam locomotivesperform better in low speed operation than dodiesels -- if you are using DCC with sound,which I am. I was getting too many “soundresets” with diesels and rarely if ever with mysteam locomotives."
I haven't heard of this before?? In general my experience have been that diesels run better than steam at slow speed, and I really haven't had much "sound reset" problems with either steam or diesel...at least none that weren't fixed with a little track or wheel cleaning (or both). What's your experience??
If you are getting sound resets with diesles you have dirty track, dirty wheels, or dirty pickups. Plain and simple.
I posted a video from my new MinuteMan iCar on the main section. WHen I ran that traina round, it was a Bowser/Stewart FT A-B set, the A unit has a TCS T1 and the B unit has a Tsunami sound decoder in it. I haven't run a train aroundmy track in months when I ran that train, and as you cna see and hear, there are NO sound dropouts. I didn't clean the track first. I don't EVER clean my track, other than cleaning the paint off when painting the rails (I'm maybe halfway done with that now). I even ran into m yard lead with one trip around - my turnouts have wires attached to powe rthe frogs but I haven't gotten around to it yet. I have not installed any extra capcitors or anything to increase keep-alive. The B unit is a factory Bowser install.
My other sound locos perform similarly. They just work, I don't get cutouts and restarts when they run. Diesel and steam.
--Randy
Modeling the Reading Railroad in the 1950's
Visit my web site at www.readingeastpenn.com for construction updates, DCC Info, and more.
The difference between early diesels and steam is probably overall length and number of wheels. Most early diesels had 4 axles, while well-wired steamers have that on the tender alone, plus another 3 or more axles further away on the engine. So, there are more points of electrical contact, and they're spread out over a longer distance.
But, yeah, Randy's right. If you've got a 4-axle diesel, properly wired to all 8 wheels, and your track and wheels are clean, and you hot-wire your frogs and make sure your point rails maintain conductivity, you should seldom get cutouts.
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.
Only thing I could think of was if you were piggybacking a sound-only decoder into an existing engine / decoder installation, and somehow wired it up so the sound decoder only picked up from one truck instead of from both. I know I have a steam engine with a sound only decoder in the tender, which is only hooked up to the tender truck pickups. It works fine, but once in a long while will reset if it hits a unusually dirty bit of track.
Now I know Jim Six has been doing this for a LONG time, so it's possible he tried installign sound decoders in some old AThearn locos, not the Blue Box ones most of us are familair with, but even OLDER ones, from back when they were available in both gear drive and rubber band "Hi Fi" drive. The gear drive ones only picked up on one side of each truck, not all 8 wheels. Or perhaps he has older brass diesels (I dunno - do newer ones, like Overland, pick up on all wheels? The late 60's vintage Alco Models RS-3 I have is all-wheel pickup) that only pick up on one side of each truck. Such locos would be somewhat flakey even on DC, but with a sound decoder and not enough keep alive capacitor - well, they will probably restart a lot on anythign but absolutely spotless track.
I'm reasonably certain a modeler of Mr. Six's stature would know that sort f thing - perhaps he's trying to justify something that doesn't need justification, a preference for steam locos.
Unless I'm misunderstanding the rest of that article, sounds like he still has plenty of diesels running around.