Use BEMF in consists?

[Maletrain]

I am working on consisting some locos to pull longish trains for long periods during our club's open house events.

The club uses Digitrax, so the consists are made in the command station, leaving CV19 values at zero - so they do not invoke the changes in other parameters that decoder-based consists might involve.

The club layout has some steep grades, peaking at 4% and often around 2%.  We run 3 or 4 trains on the same loop, so need to pay constant attention on spacing to avoid getting 2 trains on opposite ends of the reversing sections at the same time, or  coupling two of them together when distracted too long by a visitor's questions.

I have read differing opinions on whether BEMF should be turned on or off when locos are in consists. 

I am asking here for experiences others have had with and without using BEMF in consists.

[jagged ben]

FWIW My experience is that when track is clean and locos in good running order and decently speedmatched (doesn't require extreme precision) it doesn't matter.   When those things are not in great order it seems to me like BEMF may cause locos to 'surge' stutter in consist.  That is to say, in those situations I see behaviors that don't make sense unless maybe 'speed stabilization' is going into overkill.    But when the locos would all run well by themselves I don't have issues with universal consists and BEMF.

[kiwi_bnsf]

I posted some Digitrax-specific info on BEMF and consisting in this thread:

https://www.therailwire.net/forum/index.php?topic=59009.0

Hope this helps!

[jdcolombo]

I have never had problems with a 3-unit consist using BEMF, pulling trains as long as 50 cars on admittedly flat track.  The advantage of BEMF is that it will maintain speed on grades (if possible), meaning you would have to do less fiddling with your throttle to maintain train spacing.  I'm part of an N-Trak club, and we often run as many as three trains on a single track at the same time using multiple units, 30-car trains and Digitrax DCC, with all the power having ESU LokSound decoders with BEMF turned on.  We rarely have to touch the throttles once we get the trains spaced correctly.

Note that this is for ESU decoders; no experience with different decoder brands since I now use ESU exclusively and have done so for 10 years.

John C.

[tehachapifan]

I also run ESU almost exclusively and have no issues. That said, I have some recall to at least one other brand of decoder that did not play well together when in consist and it had to be turned off or way down. The locos would keep pushing and pulling against each other with it on.

[Jim Starbuck]

I rarely run consists and run primarily ESU with BEMF on. Something of note on my Digitrax decoders I find the default BEMF setting (6) is too high. Setting CV57 down to 1 or 2 improves slow speed performance.