A journal following the history, design, construction and operation of Bernard Kempinski's O Scale model railroad depicting the U. S. Military Railroad (USMRR) Aquia-Falmouth line in 1863, and other model railroad projects.
©Bernard Kempinski All text and images, except as noted, on this blog are copyrighted by the author and may not be used without permission.
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October 11, 2015

Adding DCC to PoLA


To power the PoLA layout with DCC I am using the Easy DCC system that powers the Aquia Line. I made a plug-in wiring harness that connects to a terminal block under Falmouth. When I power up the main DCC system for the Aquia Line, this harness will power the main bus lines under PoLA. If I just want to run the Aquia Line, I can disconnect the Cinch-Jones style plug and the PoLA circuits  will be disconnected. With this setup I can not run PoLA on DCC without powering the Aquia Line, but I can run it as a DC layout with a DC power pack.. Since PoLA is a temporary layout and will only use one or two engines at a time I don't expect it to be too much of a problem.

With the DCC connected, I got out my Fox Valley GP-60M and set it up. Since I hadn't read my DCC manuals in a few years I had to refresh my memory on how to program CVs. I converted my O scale programming track to an HO programing track using a piece of HO flex track and some alligator clips. With that connected,  I set the decoder diesel address to 32 ( the last two digits of the GP-60M) and CV 29 to 2. 

Putting the loco on the track I was happy to see that it ran and sounded great.The diesel sounds are very different from my 19th century steamers.  The short video shows the prime mover starting up and then pulling a car. The loco makes an odd low frequency whistling sound at idle. I wonder how long it will take to make that annoying sound unbearable?

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