??? Hi to all fellow N Gauge enthusiasts and a happy new year.
I'm hoping that someone will have experienced this problem and can advise how to fix it. About a month ago one of my DCC enabled loco's refused to start after having run well up till then, as one does I applied a gentle push and the loco started but was stuttering and after a circuit of the track took off at breakneck speed completely ignoring any commands from the ProCab including the emergency stop. I then turned off the power and started the process again. Nothing happened. So, I tried another loco that has also been a good runner and the same thing happened.
By now I was wondering if the PowerCab was in some way faulty so I contacted Ed Wilson at NCE in America and we had an e-mail conversation that covered all the usual DCC requirements such as clean track, clean wheels and pickups but no solution to the problem.
One thing that did stand out was the track voltage which I measured with a multimeter at 21.4 volts. Now I do understand that this value is going to be incorrect because of the nature of the DCC waveform and the multimeter being calibrated to measure sine waves at relatively low frequencies, but I would grateful if someone with a PowerCab could carry out the same measurement if only to get a comparison.
Over Christmas I totally re-wired the DCC bus and droppers, (not a popular activity), and tried to programme the decoders without success only getting the response from the PowerCab CAN NOT READ CV both on the programming track and the main. So I'm baffled. Any suggestions would be appreciated.
Sorry for the long post, but I wanted to give as much info as possible.
Regards.
Multimeter on AC volts says 14.25V, that's with the standard "wall wart" power supply my PowerCab came with.
Was that 21V measurement you took from the rails on the layout or directly from the PowerCab output?
Have you measured the output of your power supply?
You won't be able to read CVS on the main, only on the programming track. That's normal for DCC systems.
The voltage from the power pack is 14v.
The 21.4v ac is the same wherever it's measured. Main track, test track and the output of the PowerCab. I'm using the test track for editing cv's.
Your 14v sounds correct to me.