I have two Atlas 4-4-0's and a DC layout (for now). A DCC Gen. Haupt and a DC PRR 1510. The PRR runs great at all speeds, including a crawl. But the Haupt runs extremely poor on DC at slow speed. I'm using a Tech 7. The first part of this video shows what appears to be a pickup issue solved with a weight dropped on the cab roof. However, as the video goes on, you can see that as I lower the power, the engine has an extreme stutter. Do Tech 7's pulse at the lower speeds? I noticed a similar issue with this engine when I had been testing a 1971 MRC Throttlepack set to pulse. Full power it was ok, but no slow speed at all. Pulse power it was bad, like this. I'm not going to run this engine using DC until I figure this out. If I have to store it until I get a DCC layout running, so be it. But it's such a beautiful locomotive. I hate to let it just sit. Thoughts? Suggestions? Thanks in advance.
Many decoders have issues like this with certain throttles that don't put out a clean, linear DC current. Try it at your LHS on a DC throttle, but in all honesty you'll hardly ever get that smooth, fine motor control running anything DCC on a DC track. They are meant to operate by receiving constant high current and while they do "kick in" at lower current, yes they will start to run BUT it's often not enough to supply the chipset and the DC Motor's increasing power demand, causing it to reset or shutoff for a moment, until the capacitors onboard juice up a bit and again, it'll start to run then BAM, the motor yet again exceeds gross operating voltage (or even amperage!) required by the DCC board & motor together, and you get another reset/stall as it cannot maintain the motor's current draw along with the chipsets. Patience.... I bet that engine runs smooth as greased goose shite on a quality DCC system
Thanks. I kind of figured that was the case, but wanted to see what others had to say. I'm looking forward to getting a DCC system in the next few months.
