Working MU cables?

[nkalanaga]

Congratulations!  Using 1/16 inch tubing and U-shaped pins will probably work better than mine, as far as installing and removing them.  Mine usually stayed together.

Looks very much like my installations.  A little out of scale, but so are the couplers, and the improved performance more than makes up for any visual faults.  The best looking model isn't much use if it doesn't run!

[Frank Amato]

So what if it's a little overscale, the effect is pretty cool!

  Frank

[randgust]

I probably could have gotten away with smaller wire, or stripped the insulation off, too.   What I wasn't sure of at all was making the connection to the pickup plates under the Kato frame, and coming up with some kind of removable plug.  Success on those issues.

But seriously, nobody notices the wire size.   What I have noticed, and it's driven me nuts, is the GP38 stopping cold at some of the darndest places where nothing else ever stops.   And because it's heavier than anything else, and pulls more than anything else, a single GP unit coupled to it would just sit then and spin - so you'd reverse it back and forth a couple times to nudge the GP38 back to life.    Now watching it creep around is just worth it.  I've put up with this since I first bought it.

I'd think this would work just as well for DCC, and there's a lot more gnashing of teeth where that came from.

[nkalanaga]

As long as only the track pickups are wired together, it should work for DCC.  All you're doing is connecting all of the wheels on a side, and they're already connected by the rails (supposedly...)

[randgust]

Unless you're a tractive effort worshiper like me, I can't imagine you fighting to put DCC in a Kato GP38, but hey.

But what I have seen is some really spotty pickup in things like the BLI PA1, that turned me off both BLI and DCC big-time.  Sound only made it worse when it repeatedly stopped.  Something like this might really help, particularly where multiple unit lashups are the norm.