I was planning to fit a Stay Alive or Power Bank to the Hornby Railroad Deltic TXS HM7000 just as a simple upgrade following the successful lighting upgrade. Simple, because with the HM7000 system the fitting is literally plug and play. It takes about 30 second once the body shell is off.
As my layout is all DC I run and test my DCC upgrades on this model on a short test track. I got to thinking, what if I try and run this DCC loco on my layout with a temporary DCC power supply.
My layout is basically two upper and two lower tail chasing loops connected by various points and two separate gradients/risers. An up and a down if you will, one 2%, the other 4%.
On DC I can run four locos on the four loops using separate controllers, BUT I can set the points to create one much longer route incorporating the four loops and both of the gradients.
This long route is approximately 120ft which is not bad for a 9’x8’ layout, well I think so anyway.
So I set this route on the layout and connected ONE DCC supply to the track.
I ran the Deltic as it was before the upgrade and I was surprised and delighted that it ran brilliantly, except for one set of points on the upper level out of maybe eight sets of points on that set route.
So then the latest upgrade to the Deltic became a test to see if how effective fitting a Hornby Power Bank would be to the running of the loco.
The result as you will see is excellent and begs the question ‘do we really need all those droppers’. Such wiring complexity has in the past put me off DCC…… until now 🤗👍🤗👍🤗
As you can see i can run the route with one conection, and have worked out that to run the four loops as separate routes, and to power the marshalling yard i would get away with only SIX more dropper sets, Seven in total, far fewer than what i have been led to believe over recent years
Hope you enjoy this video and find interesting and inspirational.
Regards…. Steve 👍👍