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How to Stop Trains Stalling on DCC Layout
Ian models OO gauge (similar to HO scale) and asks readers:
“I have converted my circuit layout to DCC and sometimes trains stall. Usually a certain train will pause in a certain place on the layout but not all the time and not all my trains do it. One train pauses not far away from the main feed. Some pause on points, but I have clips fitted to create continuation of current. If anyone can advise on how to eliminate this, I would be grateful.”
27 Responses to How to Stop Trains Stalling on DCC Layout
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If you converted from DC to DCC, you may have a signal cancellation problem at some points of the layout. One thing to watch is to make sure that you have a break in the rails between feeds from the buss to the tracks. Otherwise, the signal from one set of feeds hits the signal from another set and they can cancel each other out. This is that same situation that occurs with MTH’s DCS system.
The other thing is you need to make sure your track is clean.
Hope this helps.
If possible you have very short cut in railis necessary cut the raíl in 2 parts.
Else the train not stop well
Regards
This is a recurring problem. Are you saying that the rails need to be isolated between every set of power feeds? I’ve haven’t heard that. I’m using NCE, 20 diesels, HO, 200 cars, 75 turnouts – but still have stalling on some turnouts, especially engines with sound and/or 6 axle on turnouts.
The most common cause for this is dirty track or the wheels of the locomotive have oxidation on them. If it is one or two certain locomotives that stall, check the drivers and electrical pick ups for oxidation. There are many fairly inexpensive track cleaning products on the market
Hello Ian
With Dcc you must have, clean wheels and track. Also feeder wires every five feet and solder all joiners. On loops put your gaps away from the turnouts to accommodate big locos. Good luck.
Doug
Before I respond to your problem I must ask Matt “What on earth are you talking about?” On layout with a bus system with droppers from every piece of track, with insulated breaks and isolation tracks on return curves it should not matter whether you have one, or a number of power supplies into the layout because the power supply does not control the train in DCC, the chip in the loco responds to the signal from the controller, the voltage to the track remains constant. If you mix up the + and – when wiring additional power supplies you will short out the layout and nothing will run.
Now, Ian
As said above, track and wheels must be clean, wheel gauge and back to back must conform to the NMRA standard otherwise your loco might be shorting momentarily in turnouts and roll forward with inertia, and like the hard to find squeak in your car, give you a false indication of what the problem is So check Gauge and back to back.
Are your turnouts wired to give “live” frogs which will avoid the above problem as well. Use electrofrog or similar turnouts.
Have isolation gaps suffered from environmental creep – that is, have they closed up – if so reopen them by sliding the rail 1mm and gluing a sliver of plastic card into the gap.
Check your solder joints between the rail, dropper and bus to make sure they are not “dry” – that is not actually connected even though they might look OK. Give them a tug to make sure.
Check the rail for gauge. A tight gauge might put enough pressure on the loco to make it stall If too tight, widen it. With commercial track this might mean getting a bit violent. Track pins about 2cm apart on the either side of one rail for about 10cm and then pins opposite those inserted half way on the inside of the other – then apply the gauge rollers pushing the rails apart then fully insert the the pins. This will ensurre that the rails don’t close again.
Lastly, what is the Amp output of your power supplies. A good loco in 00/HO might draw half an amp or less. The more locos on the layout, the chance of overloading the power supply increases to the point where one or more locos will stall or the layout will shut down completely. If you intend to run more than two locos at the same time in the same power sector with some of the lower end “train-set” DCC controllers you will find they have very low amp output, and you’ll need more amps.
Hope this rambling help
David
The latest cure for this type of problem is installing super capacitors in the locomotives. According to what I read these devices will give about 20 seconds of power which is adequate to get by most trouble spots.
I’ve read this in major model railroading magazines and my electrical engineer friends all agree that it will solve most if not all problems of this sort where there are oxidized or dirty rails, powerless frogs, etc. My problems is that I model N scale and fitting the engines can be impossible! I think it should be much easier for HO.
Will a supercapacitor in an engine allow the engine to continue running through a short circuit – (not merely a section of dirty track) such as caused by wheels causing a short at a frog – that momentarily shuts the whole layout down? I’ve noticed on our club layout, such situation causes the short circuit light to come on, but then the system resets itself after a few seconds – I guess because the train momentum caused the offending wheels to pass the point of the short. If that’s the case, it seems a supercapacitor would help.
But even in a large AC6000CW diesel (in my case a Broadway Limited Paragon 3), I doubt I could find a space for a supercapacitor.
I have read most of the comments, and they are all good. However, one thing not mentioned, is that some DCC decoders like to “Drop Out” if the DCC power track voltage is slightly lower than normal. I returned an Atlas F7 because it would do that, when all of my other locomotives ran just fine. Atlas replaced the decoder for free. I had some MRC steam decoders that would just stall all the time. I did everything I could, add more wheel pickups, clean the track, and wheel wipers, they just performed very poorly. My NCE system has an output power adjustment, I keep set around 15 to 16VAC (The DCC signal is actually AC). If you overload your system with too many Loco’s at one time, or your track feeder wires are too light a gauge and not secured good, all these things may be the problem. My biggest problem is at turnouts when the points are dirty, and won’t power the frogs. If you have a particular problematic locomotive that stalls too much, you can always test it on some else’s DCC layout to see if it performs the some there, it may be a defect in the locomotive.
Just a thought – I have a DC layout and had problems with a couple of sections where the locomotives hesitated and sometimes stalled (if travelling slowly enough). Notwithstanding all the track cleaning, joint and power testing etc etc, I found the problem to be much more basic. In securing and ballasting the track, I had inadvertently introduced a slight, very localised transverse twist in the track, causing the locomotive wheels to momentarily lose electrical contact to one rail. As soon as I corrected the twist the problem disappeared. Without knowing too much about DCC, I think this problem would probably cause the same effect. Good luck with it!
Ian, Loosing power is a most likely an issue here and may not be the tracks. I have been working with a friend’s engine and kept loosing control and would not take updates. I found firat I was only getting power from one truck and should have been from both, Checking connections to the wheels were good and from the chip to the wire contacts to the truck Where the axle power to the wire lead did not have good contact Some engines have a rivot where the power comes from the metal truck frame on each side but over the years has lost contact. Suggest using a punch carefully tighten the rivot some but don’t force it use an Ohm Meter to see if you have contact from the wheels to the chip wires Check before and after you tighten it up. You will have to disassemble the bad truck.to do this. With only one truck feeding power you will have problems of continuous power all the time. I am assuming that you are not shorting. If you have not checked the short system then drop a quarter or what ever across the rails and it should pop the breaker on your system. from Newman
Thank you all for your feedback on this problem. I do know that the tracks could do with a clean and I will do this first and then attempt to fix the problem by trying other ideas on here. I dont get the problem with all my locos and certain ones only stall in certain places where others dont. I also get it where it will circuit several times before it decides to stall. I will let you know how I get on and what resolved it if I am successful. Are there any recommendations on what to use to clean the track as I have seen track rubbers for sale. Are these any good or is there a better product? Your input would be most helpful.
stuff called goo-gone autozone and other stores sell it
Ian take a good look at your points, although they appear to work OK but may not make a good contact when turned off the main line. I have a point on my layout which is doing this! I am going to use a ‘snap relay’ in parallel with point switch & use the contact to switch Between main rail & turning rail. Hope this helps. Wally
It takes only the tiniest piece of fluff to prevent electrical contact at turnouts. I changed to an eBay cleaning pad in my old Triang cleaning wagon and its ‘invisible’ fluff stopped a quarter of my turnouts from making contact. Try a small stiff brush and a vacuum cleaner on all errant turnouts.
Hello. You have had pretty much all tips on your problem. here are and a few more with some follow ups.
1 Be sure the wheel sets and track are set properly to the gauge, all of the track connections are smooth even and tight, keep the track clean, check and be sure you have good electrical contact over the full length of the rails. After many years I have found that automatic trans fluid used after cleaning the track good the first time about every 3 months will keep the track in good shape. The fluid increases the electrical connection to the engine. just take a drop on a cotton swab and dab it to the rails about every 3 ft around the track, not a big glob, just enough to dampen the rail ,,, then run your trains, the wheels will disperse the fluid for you. “SOME WILL SAY THAT IT CAUSES WHEEL SLIP” “but it does not effect the tractive effort of the engines after a few minutes of running. It is a good inhibitor and will not harm anything, I have used it on my layouts and at the club for over 3 years now and don’t expect to change.
DCC sends a constant electrical current for operation to the track, but it also sends digital signals to the decoder and if that signal is lost the sound will usually be the first to cut out, maybe just a quick reset in your opinion. but it is a sign that you have lost the contact.
2 only one other said something about this but you might not know what they were talking about, that is a capacitor. it is like a small battery backup that will keep the decoder operating over dirty spots or dead spots like in turnouts etc in the track , I don’t know of any that will keep a engine going for 20 seconds but for 5 seconds or so is more that enough or you might want to work on your trackage.
I repair engines and sell all types of train items, one of them is something you should be interested in, It is called Keepalive by TCS they come in many shapes n sizes to fit different engines, I can sell you some and even install them and tune up the engines for you if needed.
Hi John do you install capacitors in n scale locos?
To stop the engine stalling I had to change the motor and solder all the joints and put extra feeds in. when converting dc to dcc as my engine’s where some 40 years old, the new engine with better engineered and with fly wheels work well.
I understand you have changed from DC to DCC. I note you have fitted contact clips to points to ensure contact from loco to track over point is ensured. I believe your problem may be wheel flanges shorting at the point ‘frog’ area. If some of your locos are older they will have thicker flanges which increases the opportunity of shorting.
If this is your problem your best move is to change your points to ‘live’ frog not forgetting to fit two insulated fishplates to the ends of the frog outlet rails. If you are using Hornby ‘setrack’ the frog clearances are wider so you may get away with standard setrack points.
As other have said it is very important to keep both loco wheels and track very clean. I will add that you may benefit from linking rails of same polarity via ‘dropper’ wires passing below the baseboard level to either a common feed around the layout or returning back up through the baseboard to the next rail making sure you keep the polarity correct at all connections.
To recap; check for both ‘open circuit’ and ‘shorting’ all over the layout having a closer look at the point areas.
Hope this helps you
Run a soft graphite pencil around the track. Solves heaps of problems.
There are some great on line tips for cleaning power trucks. They are Atlas related but the cleaning principles are the same. Most moderlers will clean wheels and track but over look the side pick ups, gearing, wheel gauge, and housings. All of these problems can contribute to stall problems.
One other possibility when the stall is at a point is that the wheels of the loco are dropping into the gap before the frog. That raises the diagonally corresponding corner of the loco. If your loco is an 0-6-0 a little dirt between the wheel and the pickup can give an intermittent stall which is very puzzling to diagnose. Run the locos as slowly as you can and note if the wheels drop and then rise again as they get to the frog. Wheel standards have become finer over the years, but points are still made so that older stock can run. If all your stock is modern, a very thin piece of plastic between the wing rails and the frog can keep the wheels running smoothly through the point.
Ian Do you have buss wires under the layout tab le. You need two wires – one for each rail. then you need small gauge wires coming from the rails to the buss wires. The spacing is every three to six feet of length of rails. Hopefully this will solve your problem. I look forward to “hearing ” from you.
Don
Ian Besides running the Buss Wires under the table, . try cleaning your diesel locomotive wheels and tender wheels ( if a steam engine). Also clean your track with a Bright Boy cleaner. often.. Replace dirty plastic wheels on your freight cars with metal wheels. Metal wheels do not carry dirt like plastic wheels do.
I viewed a product called KA2 module from TCS on youtube once that a guy had installed into his locomotive (0-4-0) and it allowed him to run over dirty or faulty track. It stored electricity so when he ran over a section of track that would normally stall a engine , it didn’t. It kept his engine running for 30 seconds or so after he shut down the power to the track. the name of this guys video is ” mantua 0-4-0 with a little something extra! The poster is kbkchooch.
You could have one of many problems. If you converted from DC ypu probably don’t have separate feeds to every track section. A bus bar connecting every piece of rail to every other of the same polarity within the power district would help or iof this is too much a dedicated feed to where the trains stall. Rail joiners were not designed for the 4 amps and 20 volts of DCC.
Back to back faults on trains or track loose or tight to gauge, flexi often goes tight to gauge when curved can add resistance, maybe it is one particular car binding.
I run outdoors, even when it is raining and in my experience the locos with multiple poickups are the worst offenders at stalling, the best are heavy old die casts with only the outer 4 driving wheels touching the track. Their weight seems to bite through the water and dirt. Weight for weight they don’t pull as well as the newer locos with all wheels on the track but they keep going.