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Reply to "Coasting Drives"

as I mentioned I replaced the original motor in a car and locomotive shop engine that had a coasting drive. by added a gear head motor it defeated the coasting feature. But another reason for doing this was I was unsure how a coasting drive would function when a DCC sound decoder was added. decoders with sound function by reading the back EMF from the motor. with that said, I was thinking that the motor being back driven by a coasting drive producing back EMF going downhill would drive a DCC sound decoder crazy. with coasting drive the motor is acting as a generator. anyway I never found out if the decoder would function properly because when I replaced the original motor with the gear head motor I added a Soundtrax DCC decoder at the same time.

I still believe that a coasting drive is a gimmick. what is is purpose? the physics of O scale is such that an engine will not coast to a long stop like a real steam when power is cut to the motor. the mass and momentum is just not there. It may be that collectors just like to push the engine back and forth and watch the drive wheels go around and they think that is a cool feature. but on a model railroad it worthless and a dangerous downhill runaway.

bob2, I do believe that DCC encoders with all of their performance settings have made things like flywheels and coasting drives, clutches and fluid drives unnecessary. A DCC encoder will improve a models performance greatly compared to a straight DC model. DCC uses PWM (pulse width modulation) frequency to control a motors speed not voltage as in DC operation. so its similar to pulse power which improves the motors overall performance.

Last edited by David Eisinger

OGR Publishing, Inc., 1310 Eastside Centre Ct, Suite 6, Mountain Home, AR 72653
800-980-OGRR (6477)
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