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Jacco Krist (USA)

Most of the modelling is done in DCC (HO scale). I am no expert and experimented a bit, the following works for me, but I don't know if what I did is correct or will damage the decoder, so if anybody wants to experiment with this do so at your own risk.


I used current conducting close couplers (Marklin) and only one set of wheel contacts for the common (negative)on the car with the decoder, this is the only common for the whole train.

For 2 rail DC installation with a decoder: The lead car with decoder should have two sets of pick up springs, one for the positive and one for the common.

1) Connect black wire from the Decoder to one set of wheel contacts -common/negative.
 

2) Connect red decoder wire to the other wheel set contacts for the positive Also connect the red LED wire (positive) to these contacts

I am switching the negative on or off:
I wanted my lights to operate independently of the direction of travel, so I took the yellow and white wires for the directional headlights and solderd them together with the black wire from the LEDs. If you stop here then you can switch the light in one car on or off. If you want the rest of the cars to work on the same decoder solder a wire together with the white/yellow/black and connect that to the current conducting couplers (green wire in my pictures)

I used a decoder with the same address as the engine, so that when I switch the engine lights on the lights in the car are also switched on.


I used current conducting couplers to enable the whole train to be switched on with just one decoder.


All the other cars should only have one set of positive current pick up springs, connect the red wire from the LEDs to these springs in each of the following cars.

The black wire from the LED's in the other cars is connected to the current conducting couplers.

The last step is to connect the front and rear current conducting couplers together, yellow wire in my pictures.

When putting the train on the track be sure that all the positive wheels are on the same side.

It is basically the same as Marklin where you use one centre pickup for the whole train, here you only connect the decoder car to the common over the wheels, all other cars you only connect to the positive.


About DC & DCC

DC and DCC work the same, I just hooked DC up to my tracks and all the lights work fine. I think however that most people who run DC, power each car with both positive and negative, two sets of wheel contacts. I have a bit of an unusual set up as I run Trix Express trains, which is 3 rail DC, but technically this is the same as 2 rail DC. For normal DC just leave the decoder out.


 

When using the decoder you can do a whole lot of other things. If you only connect one wire (yellow or white) to the lamps it will also work. If you give the decoder a different address you can then just select it, switch the lights on or off, and give it special effects if you want, like strobing, blinking, dimming, whatever you want


 

Contact:
Jacco would be happy to reply to questions relating to his work. At the current time, Messages for him should be sent to: "model_train_hobby (at) yahoo.com" with Subject: Question for Jacco Krist.



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