Hybrid Drive / DCC Direct Clinic at NMRA National

[StanAmes]

For those going to Detroit for the NMRA National next week, I will be providing a clinic on Hybrid Drive and DCC Direct Monday and Tuesday evenings which may be of interest to the Large Scale community.

Hybrid Drive places an auxiliary power source on board the locomotives and allows the locomotive to operate and be controlled on both clean and dirty track.

DCC Direct separates the DCC signal from the power and allows one to use DCC with both track power and battery power with the signal coming from either the track or via radio.  For example you can run the same locomotive on DC track power, DCC track power (with or without auxiliary power on-board), DCC track signal with on-board batteries, radio signal with track power or radio signal with on-board batteries. Only DC power and DCC without on board auxiliary power remove the requirement for clean track. 

These technologies allow locomotive manufacturers to use the latest in electronics within their locomotives and the user to select whatever control method they desire for their railroad.  By basing the concept on the use of the world wide DCC standard packet format, we have a standard interface point that any any all manufacturers can design to. 

After the Clinic I will post the power point slides on the tttrains WWW site

http:www.tttrains.com/dcc/hybriddrive

Stan Ames