8 May 24. TXS Deltic Upgrade. Stay Alive Test…DC to DCC…Do we Really Need Droppers Everywhere???
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 15 ก.ย. 2024
- I was planning to fit a Stay Alive or Power Bank to the Hornby Railroad Deltic TXS HM7000 just as a simple upgrade following the successful lighting upgrade. Simple, because with the HM7000 system the fitting is literally plug and play. It takes about 30 second once the body shell is off.
As my layout is all DC I run and test my DCC upgrades on this model on a short test track. I got to thinking, what if I try and run this DCC loco on my layout with a temporary DCC power supply.
My layout is basically two upper and two lower tail chasing loops connected by various points and two separate gradients/risers. An up and a down if you will, one 2%, the other 4%.
On DC I can run four locos on the four loops using separate controllers, BUT I can set the points to create one much longer route incorporating the four loops and both of the gradients.
This long route is approximately 120ft which is not bad for a 9’x8’ layout, well I think so anyway.
So I set this route on the layout and connected ONE DCC supply to the track.
I ran the Deltic as it was before the upgrade and I was surprised and delighted that it ran brilliantly, except for one set of points on the upper level out of maybe eight sets of points on that set route.
So then the latest upgrade to the Deltic became a test to see if how effective fitting a Hornby Power Bank would be to the running of the loco.
The result as you will see is excellent and begs the question ‘do we really need all those droppers’. Such wiring complexity has in the past put me off DCC…… until now 🤗👍🤗👍🤗
As you can see i can run the route with one conection, and have worked out that to run the four loops as separate routes, and to power the marshalling yard i would get away with only SIX more dropper sets, Seven in total, far fewer than what i have been led to believe over recent years
Hope you enjoy this video and find interesting and inspirational.
Regards…. Steve 👍👍
Excellent result Steve, Dcc has it's benefits indeed, Multi train running especially, i only have a few droppers as my top lines are separate. And a couple on the bottom, And as Robert says the clips are great, i have them on all points. But a great result, Hope you feel better soon. ATB to you.Stuart
Steve great result, I haven’t seen any of your vids for quite some time hope I haven’t missed any. Will check I’m still subd and notifications are on. 👍
Hi Colin. Glad you dropped in again. Hope you are doing ok. TH-cam is a bit hit and miss sometimes 👍👍
Very interesting experiment..! How well it will work in the long term is probably the question though, it might be very successful in the long term, fitting the bus-wire and the droppers might help in any problem areas of your layout. Trying to turn a DC layout into DCC layout isn't the easiest of tasks..! I Hope it works out for you, and that you can achieve the running qualities you seek from your layout, get well soon too..! Will we ever have an end to covid..! Get well soon Steve.
Hi Maurice. Thanks for watching and your nice comments.
Yes it will be interesting to see how this goes. I’m aiming to use as few droppers as possible to run dcc over the whole layout,and to have the ability to switch between dc and dcc so I can continue to use all of my kit.
Sadly I think Covid is here to stay. We need to do what we can to not pass it on to others if we catch it.
Regards… Steve 👍
Hi Steve, DCC is simple to start with but it can get complicated if you go in to deep with block detection and things like that I’ve got a separate DC line and the rest is DCC witch I run multiple loco’s on the Hornby clips just gives you continuous power on the points cheers Al
Hi Al. All the complicated dcc stuff has always put me off.
So I decided to see if I can enjoy the benefits of dcc but still keep things simple.
Im really interested to see how this plays out. It may be cheating a little but it seems that Stay Alives might make things work in my favour. In the future I think they will become a standard factory fit. If I’m not mistaken isn’t one of the manufacturers already doing that, for a price of course.
I hope to do some short progress videos on the project.
Regards… Steve 👍
Hi Steve.
Sorry about the covid buddy.
Mines dc only still can't get dcc round my technophobe head.
Your layout is bigger than mine and I love the different levels.
Get rid of that horrible bug mucker.
Still got your photo by the way.
.... Pete....
Hi Pete. Hope you are well. I’m just experimenting to see if I can enjoy the benefits of dcc and still keep things relatively simple. Like you I have been put off by some of the complicated set ups and the mega costs in electronics.
I’m using Hornby HM7000 on an old iPhone 8 that I had in a drawer. Also the Hornby Bluetooth sound decoders. Let’s see how that goes. I won’t be using sound chip alone. I will be using ordinary dcc decoders on older kit as well as keeping dc locos. I want to be able to switch between dc and dcc so I can still run all my yummy toys 🤣🤣
Regards…. Steve 👍👍
Very interesting . I’ve long been waiting to see how someone could run DCC on an otherwise DC layout . I’ve been collecting locos since 1965 , so you can imagine there’s a fair few by now . I can’t go DCC as some of these locos pretty old , but I do still run them . I do fancy an occasional sound loco though . What I’d really like to see is how some of these Bachmann sound fitted locos run on DC . However what you’ve done gives food for thought . Does your HM7000 Deltic go on DC and aren’t you frightened that you might get DC and DCC mixed up Causing problems to locos . Great video , the first I’ve seen attempting this . Hope you get over Covid soon !
Hi Russell. Thanks for dropping in and your interest in this project.
Im literally going to add one dropper at a time to fix dead spots and see how that goes.
I don’t run dcc locos on dc at all. I hope to set things up so the layout is switched between one or the other.
I expect snags and problems during this project but it will be fun trying to solve those problems don’t you think. 👍
As long as I can still run trains throughout the process that is. 🤣
Regards…. Steve 👍👍
Hi IV got dcc and the most important place to have droppers is all around the points on peco insulated I have you need good contact on switch blades area
Hi Dave…Thanks for watching and the helpful tip. This is a bit of an experiment really. To see how few droppers are needed to run my layout on dcc. It will be interesting to see how it goes. I think stay alives may help me cheat my way to a decent result 🤣👍
Regards…. Steve 👍
Hi Steve,
I ran my loft layout with not many feeds and it did work although the small locos 0-4-0 & 0-6-0 would struggle on the hornby points but to make the whole layout live it needed the hornby clips in them when I did the conversion to iTrains you had to have each block with its own feed and doing that did make a huge diffence to there running and thats why I will do a dropper on every bit of track and the points on the end to end so it will be interesting to see how you get on with Dcc on yours. What dcc controller have you got to run this. I hope you will soon shake of the covid but well done for doing this video when suffering from it.
Cheers Robert.
Hi Robert. Thank you for watching. I hope all is ok with the skin problem you mentioned on your video. From personal experience it’s essential to get these things checked out asap. I’m new to dcc, and I want to try and keep things basic and simple also not too costly, so I don’t get a headache 🤣
I’m using Hornby HM7000 on a spare iphone. So cheap as chips 👍🤣
I will be trying things out and testing various wiring set up ideas. I will hopefully do an update/progress video soon. I’ve got some of those clips but need to understand what they do much better than I do at present.
I will learn about and understand dcc better as I go. It has always looked too fiddly and electrically complicated to me and that put me off. But if it’s possible to do dcc simply and I can retrofit my layout cheaply then I’m up for it.
Regards…. Steve 👍👍