Recently (temporarily) downgraded my DCC layout to DC by disconnecting the DCC feeds and attaching a DC powerpack. I did this ostensibly for my friend who wants to test out the non-decodered Aerotrain he bought but he's yet to bring it over. However, that train reminded me a have a C-C M10000 w/o decoder and I hadn't seen that run for a while. I set it up, carefully cracked the throttle (it's a 16V pack) anticipating the train to go shooting off at lightspeed but no ... it ran nicely at probably what was prototype speed, circling round and round w/o mishap. And articulated trains with all trucks as power pickup never stalls!!
After that I wondered what my other old DC locos would do and so I hauled them out. I can see now why Lee loves these old toys. They run so much better than how we remember, probably because the layouts we build now are vastly superior in track quality than those first crude layouts (w/ terrible switches). And they just run and run! No derails, no stalls, all in all a very pleasurable experience. Love watching them smoothly go round and round (on my layout it takes three trips around the layout before they get back to where they started). Of course, the only old locos we saved from back then were the best-runners so that helps.
And an unexpected result is my BLI E7 (first run) that stalls out and restarts every few inches on the DCC now run straight though the whole layout w/o a hitch. With a 16V pack it's enough "oomph" for the decoder to get a decent speed, too.
Yeah Lee, you got it right -- old school is pretty cool.
