Twin motor LCE

[Gizzy]

I reckon the way you have it now is best?

Setting up a consist means more button presses on your Remote, and is more work.

As we say in the military, KISS!

Keep it simple, stupid....

 

[ntpntpntp]

I agree with Gizzy, there would be no advantage in consisting. Your LCE *always* runs as a set so using the same loco address on the two decoders is simple. Consisting is for when you want to temporarily lash up locos for double heading etc.

What's wrong with the way it runs now, ie. what are you hoping would be better by changing?

 

[Gizzy]

What's wrong with the way it runs now, ie. what are you hoping would be better by changing?

On occasion when either end traverses a point at slow speed, the motor concerned will stall and will not cut in again until the trains is stopped and restarted, just wondered what the effect of using two addresses would be.

Maybe a power buffer is the answer here?

Or extra pickups from the other power car bogie....

 

[Cliff George]

That is a strange problem.

So do you mean that even when the stalled motor gets past the problem point and has power again that it still doesn't spring into life? Very strange, I don't see how being in a consist or not would affect this problem. In both cases the DCC system should be sending out comands that say the motor should be going at a given speed.

What I have done with my LCE, which also has two decoders, is to wire it all of the way through so that the power picked up at the front is connected to the power picked up at the back. I've also fitted a few power pick up wheelsets at intermediate points. While this may solve your problem I suspect in reality it would just be coving the problem up, because neither motor/decoder would loose power.

 

[Zerogee]

What's wrong with the way it runs now, ie. what are you hoping would be better by changing?

On occasion when either end traverses a point at slow speed, the motor concerned will stall and will not cut in again until the trains is stopped and restarted, just wondered what the effect of using two addresses would be.

Never having had an LGB LCE, this may be a silly question - but is there no electrical connection between the units? If not, could you put one in, just a two-wire plugged connection so both units could share power pickup? Each decoder would still run its own motor only, but I'd have thought that would get over any problems of power interruption at points? What I'd GUESS is happening at present is that when one bogie stalls at slow speed, the decoder running it loses power for longer than its tiny internal buffer can cope with and thus loses its speed programming. An electrical connection between the two sets of power feeds would get over this completely.
Of course, I might be completely wrong, it has been known!

Edit: Cliff posted his response above while I was still typing mine, he knows a lot more about DCC magic than I ever will, so I'd listen to him!
Jon.

 

[ntpntpntp]

I was going to suggest the same as Cliff, ie. run a pair of wires through the set and wire the two bogies together.

My Amtrack LCE doesn't have a second power bogie yet but I have run wiring through to the other end to power the lights when I fitted the chip , and if I do ever fit a second brick I'll definitely wire them together.

http://www.gscalecentral.net/fb.ashx?m=155118

When you say the power brick stalls entirely and won't restart, you mean it's totally dead ? Not just taking a while to speed up again as it would if you've got slow acceleration/braking set in the decoder? That's very odd if it is totally stalled. A power buffer would be the next best answer after running through-wiring.

 

[Philbahn]

I have found that with two decoders you sometimes find that the motors run at different speeds.
One of my crockodils would hardly pull three coaches. I relaced thee two chips with an MTS 3 and now it pulls like mad.

 

[Cliff George]

It would seem then that an aggravated decoder could lose its marbles and need to be reset???????

Possibly, but it should not happen frequently. If it does I would suspect something else to be wrong. I don't think that just loosing power should cause an 'aggravated decoder'.