Search the Community

If you have a powered up layout in current operation there may come the time when you will want to use an unpowered siding or staging track like I do where you add the engine to an unpowered section of track, add power and drive it off. When you add power to a DCS engine, it first looks for a 'watchdog' signal which is sent by the TIU only when first turned on. After the TIU is turned on, the only way to trigger this signal to be sent again later is to hit the 'READ' button on the remote. (which is easy enough) But this idea just brought up (and many thanks to Chuck for sharing this with me) is the use of a DCS Remote Commander box passively connected to each siding. (set pictured below) These were created for inexpensive starter O gauge sets intended to control just one engine. However if you connect the DCS Remote Commander box to a siding passively (ie. Connect the red and black terminals to the siding) when the siding is powered up it will generate the watchdog signal automatically so you dont need to hit the 'READ' button when powering it up. (Also note that it does not matter what power polarity the DCS Commander box sees, it will still transmit the watchdog signal and the engine will still receive it so just connect a wire from each rail to each terminal and go.) Why this is important: If a DCS equipped engine receives track power without receiving the watchdog signal it assumes that it is supposed to run under regular analog track power and will power up and start running. So if you want to run an engine under remote control you will want to make sure you send the watchdog signal to the engine at the time it is powered up so it waits for remote commands. http://www.mthtrains.com/content/50-1033 Great tip and will be buying a couple of these for my two staging tracks on my layout. I'm trying to find out now if the box is available separately. If anyone is looking for these let me know and I can get a price for you. Raymond