[Howzatt]

My experience while chipping a couple of Steam Loco's, both of which went into "runaway" has led me to leave all caps in place. One particular Loco that had no caps fitted to the motor from new, was only controllable once caps had been retro-fitted. With my set-up, Diesel Loco's don't seem as critical, probably due to their multi-axle pickups with less chance of producing signal corrupting spikes, and will work with or without caps.

It seems that users get different results depending on their DCC System/ Decoder/ Loco combination. What will work for one probably won't work for another.

Regards

 

[Howzatt]

Many thanks Richard for his constructive comments re my loco runaway problem. For the record, I believe my track wiring to be first rate, using ring main cable for a power bus with each separate piece of track of connected to this with 16/0.2mm multistrand wire. My layout at the moment is basically a simple 2 ovals on a 8'x4' board. I've read about adding a terminator network elsewhere to cure this problem and I will certainly give this a try, but I really don't see why I should need to go down this track (sorry!). The fact remains that with my system, and with certain loco's, capacitors need to be left in place to prevent uncontrollability. This doesn't seem to cause any adverse effect as slow running can be perfectly controlled to a crawl. I'm starting to think that there could be an odd fault with my DCC controller. A scope connected across the track may shed more light on this when I can borrow one.

Best regards

 

[Howzatt]

Thanks again for your advice Richard, this is really starting to make sense. I have tried using the power bus looped and broken with no major change, but I will now follow your suggestions re the two terminators. I understand that a looped power bus can cause a kind of "mirror image" in the DCC signal. Incidentally, I am using solid copper 1.5mm sq mains lighting cable (twin & earth) for the power bus, the 16x0.2 multistrand is used for drop wires to the track. Sorry for the confusion.

If all else fails, I will replace the PSU as you suggest.

If everything worked correctly first time, there would be something wrong.

Best regards