What maxman said
reasearchhoundWell, we had our board meeting and 10 out of 11 voted to keep our Digitrax system, but begin swapping out our older 5amp boosters for new 8amp ones. I am pleased with the results.
I am pleased with the results.
That's a good decision. I would, however, like the others have said, focus on the actual problems before replacing ANYTHING. If one booster or power supply is bad, that one section will have issues and the others will not. Make sure the wiring is up to snuff, make sure your users aren't going rogue and performing unauthorized actions, make sure you have PSX/PSXX breakers on every power district and can isolate any electrical issues that come up.
Digitrax has a reputation of being hard to use. This was true with the DT100 and to an extent the DT300. It is NOT true with the DT400 series, they are on part with NCE, but then Digitrax seems to have regressed with the DT602 and UT6 with some truly weird design and UI/UX decisions.
ALEXANDER WOOD with the DT400 series, they are on part with NCE, but then Digitrax seems to have regressed with the DT602 and UT6 with some truly weird design and UI/UX decisions.
Since I have switched to a different DCC system, I have a hardly ever used DT402D I am happy to part with if anyone is interested
Rio Grande. The Action Road - Focus 1977-1983
As a 25-year Digitrax user, the original problem of the layout randomly shutting down during operations is almost certainly caused by users of DT400/500-series throttles not knowing the difference between "local" stop and "global" stop.On a Digitrax DT400 or 500, the Emergency Stop button can be programmed to work in one of two ways. When the throttle is programmed to "local" stop, pressing the Emergency Stop button only zeros out the active throttle (pressing it again zeros out the other throttle) and cancels out any CV04 coasting momentum. This only effects addresses being run by this one throttle only.When a throttle is programmed to "global" stop, pressing the Emergency Stop button puts the layout into "Pause" mode.
Every Digitrax system has three power modes: On, Off, and Pause. On a DT400 or DT500-series throttle, there's a pixel in the upper right corner of the screen. If this dot is on, the track power is on. If it's off, the track power is off. If the dot is blinking, the layout is paused. Normally, the only way to pause the layout is to hit the Power button once, then hit "+" when the layout is already turned on (do it again to unpause)."In pause" mode, all trains stop, thus the global aspect of the name. Note that this does not zero out any throttles; it only stops trains from running. When un-paused, all trains will resume at their current throttle setting.A few end users at clubs like to think that they know what they're doing and they program their own throttles to be "global" stop (note that "local" stop is the default setting). I guess they think that "global" sounds better than "local"? Anyways, these folks also like to play with momentum effects like CV04, and when they get into trouble (like they're gonna hit a bumper or miss a Kadee magnet), they hit Emergency Stop and put the layout into Pause mode.
We've had so many incidents like this that we've had to teach every member what it means and to follow a set of programming guidelines for each throttle they have. Please note that when a layout is paused, the track power is still on. All headlights continue to function (but are not controllable), the status lights remain on and constant, etc., but no trains will move until it is unpaused. The only way to tell if the layout is paused is to look at a throttle and look for the dot or, for a DT600, it will say "Paused".
Interesting post, Paul. That sure sounds like what happened at the OP's club.
Rich
Alton Junction
Thanks for the info. Copied it and sent it on to the member who is in charge of getting the throttles to behave. He was at the club yesterday afternoon and managed to corral a few personal throttles and reconfigured them.
Great post Paul. That was one thing that didn't even occur to me. I don't understand why people even use E-stop in the first place, it seems like cheating the system. If something really bad is going to happen, I can just hold the locomotive down or pull it back.
We had to do that with our UWT throttles too and our NCE throttles. Because people panic....especially when they forget that they are running a loco with a TCS decoder set up for momentum and braking and they didn't plan properly.
That "Global: stop is a PITA. At the large N Scale Layout in Louisville in 2008 all throttles had to have that turned off. Throttles were inspected by the DCC Staff before they could run a train on the red line.
I recall talking to A.J. Ireland about this feature. He told me that he would have left that feature out if it wasn't something many individual operators wanted.
When that dot is blinking, DCC packets are stopped but track power stays on. I've even taken phone calls while away from a layout to "fix" that problem.
Martin Myers
And hopefully this will be a less expensive solution than spending X amount of dollars for un-needed boosters.
I would suggest the following for repeat offenders: