logistiker

I'll take a dumb motor that is at least DCC ready so I can just use a third party decoder. I saw how Michael added DCC support to a Lego motor years ago but it's a bit of a pain. I have yet to open a 9v Lego train motor without cutting the tabs and of course once they're cut, it doesn't stay together very well anymore unless you superglue it. I had dual wheel pickup on the locomotive tender on the front and back bogie and I found it didn't make any difference. If there was even a slight cut in power, the PF receiver would turn off and you'd have to start it up again. Sorry I misspoke in the last post, I'm using 5 3v 15F capacitors in a series. I was thinking that if it's pulling a heavy load or there's a longer power cut, then it wouldn't be noticeable. I was basically following the concept documented at brickmodelrailroader.com for a keep alive: https://brickmodelrailroader.com/index.php/2017/03/20/supercapacitor-power-packs/. There is no battery. The charge board is just for the capacitors as you can see in that article. Initially I was seeing if I could make it work with minimal cost and ditching the battery of course but after all this ordeal, I finally came to the conclusion that I needed to convert to DCC. For example, the Loksound 58325 can provide up to 3 amps of power (compared to a puny 1 amp for the PF receiver) and that should be more than enough to move a large dual L-motor 4-8-4 locomotive with a bunch of heavy carriages. In addition, that decoder already has its own capacitors with a built-in keep alive. It looks pretty nice. It takes up a lot less space and isn't terribly expensive either (i.e. cheaper than one box of FX bricks turnouts - haha).

I've been experimenting with Bevin's Bricks power pickups and you can get by with just one power pickup if you place a charging board and capacitor bank after the bridge rectifier. It's also helpful to run your tracks at higher power (think laptop power supply at 18v) so the capacitors can charge quickly. I've found that 5 3V 1F supercapacitors in series for a total of 15v is more than enough to keep your locomotive moving over dirty track. In my case, I replaced one wheel in the tender for the power pickup. I typically use the knockoff Chinese PF receivers so I don't have to deal with the limitations of Lego's PF IR because there are places it can be blocked on my layout and I detest PU and don't consider it a viable option. The problem is I'm running into current limitations of those receivers when paired with a locomotive running dual L-motors when two L-motors are placed on one output of one receiver. I changed it so it uses two receivers and placed one motor on each receiver on the same output channel but it doesn't seem to work well either. I've read this is also a problem with the official PF receivers and the V2 can handle more current but it's still IR and that's annoying. I think I've just come to the logical conclusion that I need to get DCC. I'm eyeballing the Loksound 5 L decoder for my dual motor locomotive. Not only does it have its own keep alive, it can pull 3 amps, it also does sound and a host of other functions and it takes up a lot less space than a bridge rectifier, charge board, 5 capacitors in series, a buck board and two separate PF style receivers. I was trying to find some other solution because DCC is generally expensive but there are cheaper options now for a command station like the CSB1 although the ESU 50210 is more tempting despite the cost. Anyone know if the first FX motor bogie is going to have DCC compatibility? I remember reading about it in older blogs that he wanted to make it DCC compatible but I'm curious if that will be in the first iteration of the motor. Based on the latest blog on FX bricks, it looks like all regular DC controls to me similar to the old 12v system.

Why? You could just get an inexpensive buck converter which incidentally is better than a boost converter because at least you're not giving up current for extra voltage (translation: You gain speed when boosting voltage but lose power).