Pete the Elaner

LBSCR tried it a century ago - and Southern ripped it out in favour of third rail.

& the GWR ditched their broad gauge in favour of standard a few years before that. Doesn't mean it was better.

We appear to be drifting a little here...I thought this thread was about Peco's forthcoming product.

People don't know what it looks like! So far we have 2 people posting examples which they claim the peco OLE looks like. One is MK1 and one is Mk3 - these are 2 different systems and have next to nothing in common. So in that respect PMP is right in that its close enough for most people and for those that care about prototype accuracy they will probably build their own.

 

But to be fair to Peco the picture does show a rough mock up, a sketch almost. The Peco stuff is kind of close to mk1 but has the top catenary wire missing

I completely agree with all of that. The wire arrangement in the Peco mock-up loks nothing like anything I have seen on the prototype.

I think it is a stop in the right direction for someone to be making catenary which looks close to british. All previous RTR systems are based on european systems & look nothing like anything in the UK.

Having built my own catenary (poorly), I know how difficult it is to get it to look right without falling apart when the wind blows!

Thanks. I wasn't trying to be argumentative; I was just trying to understand how it works.

Explains why I got a nasty kick once or twice from my friend's relco-equipped DC layout causing me to shout loud expletives at an expo. I am convinced he did not wire them properly , so that probably didn't help.

So the previously mentioned method of mixing them 'safely' effectively reduces the voltage?

Isn't that defeating the object of having the HF cleaner in the first place?

The fact that DCC is AC has nothing to do with track cleanliness (or not).

Are you sure?

Why does applying a high-frequency clean the track? The only reason I could think of is that a varying current would create a varying magnetic field which scrambles some of the dirt. It shouldn't actually even have to be AC, although that would be better because it reverses the field.

DCC produces an alternating voltage: (virtually) a square wave. Square waves make the current change very rapidly albeit slightly out of phase due to the inductance & capacitance of the load (decoders).

Since changing over to DCC control in the last few years, I've found the need to clean track/wheels etc very much reduced, once cleaned, they appear to stay clean much longer than when using DC even WITH HF cleaners. The then commonly used "rubber traction tyres" were I believe, partly to blame !

Good reason for that:

HF cleaners use a high-frequency signal to keep the track clean.

DCC systems use a high-frequency signal to talk to decoders.

Anyone see a similarity here?

DCC also uses full voltage all of the time, so the age old DC problem of trying to make a small voltage push current across a poor connection (rail to wheel) is eliminated completely since this is always max voltage.

I therefore question the need for an HF track cleaner with DCC.