5 axle diesel problem

[richg]

Just a guess. I have heard of some people wanting to use a bunch of resistors to slow down a loco. Generally they do not know what they are doing and heard that is the way to do it. They just used diodes in this case.. Seems to be a crude way of doing this. Just remove three diodes, solder the decoder wire directly and you should be ok.

As a comparison, those who do not understand DC or DCC say, throw a capacitor at the loco to make it run better over dirty track. I know a couple people some years ago did that with a DC power pack. When they reversed the power pack, poof went the caps.

Rich

[Limey]

Thanks jward and richg,  I am not totally au fait with electronics but when I metered before this thing and got a reading and then metered after it and got nothing I thought that there was something askew. 

Regards, Limey.

[GG1onFordsDTandI]

1n4004 diodes drop about 0.7v, so 11 of them would have reduced the voltage to the motor by about 8v. the arrangement you described would have been a bi-polar way to drop that voltage. what they were hoping to accomplish by doing that I have no idea.

Probably there to slow it. Maybe protection from a higher volt or non train power supply. Crude, but simple, effective, and for a novice, easy to "adjust" by adding/subtracting.