Friday, May 22, 2015

Marklin Layouts and DCC

So I have a friend who is a Marklin modeler.  His thing is scenery, but with this new layout he has he got Marklin DCC and asked me to do the electrical.  Now I've never worked with AC trains before so I was a bit unsure of what to do.  I studied up a bit and brought my tool box over and went to work.

First thing that happened was I determined that we didn't have the right power supply, completely wrong model.  So he over-nighted the correct power supply but it came with a bare wire adapter.

So I went to Radio Shack which was still open but almost empty and they still had the plug matching station with most plugs still on the rack.  The M plug fit the best, but they didn't have one, so I took the next best thing which was the K plug.

I installed the K plug and and tested the voltage at 20 volts.  Everything was perfect.

Then, since I can read German I was easily able change the language on the Mobile Station to English and start using the functions to troubleshoot the trains....

One at a time I tested the 3 locomotives.  2 only buzzed very faintly and 1 does run for 8 seconds then stops.  Then when I press the stop button again it goes another 8 seconds, but no reverse and no speed control.....

and the troubleshooting goes on.....