accompaniment to a locomotive that sees far more layout time than any of my good-sized fleet of mute steam and diesels. Now, if I can just figure out a way to get seagull screeches and the distant Jersey Turnpike roar into the layout room, I would be all set. The Bachmann S-4 locomotive with DCC and sound is priced at $159.00.—DON SPIRO
1946 Grand Canyon Limited HO Scale
www.dallee.com Santa Fe
Stationary DCC decoder: All scales Mfd., by Aux-Box,
www.Aux-Box or
www.AuxBoxDCC.com Aux-Box has introduced a new sta- tionary or accessory, DCC decoder with several interesting features. Most presently available DCC stationary de- coders are designed to receive com- mands and supply power from the track bus and to provide powered out- puts designed for stall motor, twin coil, or bipolar switch machines, and other similar accessories. The Aux-Box pro- vides eight electronic relay circuits, each of which is the solid state equiva- lent of a “dry” SPST conventional me- chanical relay contact. (A Navy Chief Electricians Mate once explained to me that, “Son, a dry contact means it’s got no juice!”) This offers a wide variety of poten-
The Coach Yard
www.thecoachyard.com Committed to Excellence
tial applications on a layout. Some of the uses suggested by the Aux-Box folks include operating electromagnet- ic uncouplers; turning a 16VAC auxil- iary power bus for accessories on or off; turning track power on or off for sid- ings or staging tracks (to stop sound lo- cos from using up booster power); turn- ing on or off animated layout scenes, animated signs or building lighting; setting the outputs to flash grade crossing signal lights and automatical- ly turning on and off layout animation features or sound effects. The Aux-Box connects to the DCC
power bus to both receive DCC com- mands and to power the Aux-Box logic circuits. This power is not used to sup- ply any of the connected accessories, so the Aux-Box current draw from the DCC power supply is only 75mA. All of the Aux-Box switches can be turned on and off by any NMRA compliant DCC System that supports stationary de- coder addressing. The Aux-Box uses MOS-FET solid state switching tran- sistors with no open relay contacts that can oxidize, and all of the switches are opto-isolated from the DCC controller to prevent potential short circuits be- tween the DCC system and the con- nected accessories. Each Aux-Box cir- cuit board includes eight switches rated at 3.0 amps at up to 30 volts a.c. or d.c. The Aux-Box does not provide short circuit protection for the eight outputs. This should not be a problem for hard-wired loads like building lights or layout animation. It can be a problem if the Aux-Box is
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used to turn on power to layout tracks with the potential for derailments, so the instructions state that these appli- cations require an external DCC cir- cuit breaker. The circuit board mea- sures 7.45″ wide by 6.75″ high and has mounting holes at each corner. Some of the component leads descend about ¹/₈″ below the bottom of the board, so user supplied short stand-offs or washers are needed to mount the board. The Aux-Box circuit board includes setscrew terminal blocks that accept wire sizes from 26 to 16awg for the DCC track bus input and for the eight pairs of switched outputs. The board includes small surface mount LED’s that indicate when DCC power is ap- plied, when the board is in the pro- gramming mode, and when each of the switches is turned on. Switches 1 to 4 include timer circuits, each of which can be deactivated, or set to turn off the circuit after a programmable inter- val of 1 to 255 seconds. The Aux-Box includes solder connections for two ex- ternal photocells, each of which can be programmed to activate one or more of the eight output switches. The board also includes a two-phase flash timer that can be programmed to flash any number of the switched outputs simul- taneously or alternately, very much like operating ditch lights from a mo- bile decoder. The Aux-Box has 23 programmable
CV’s. One CV sets the DCC address of the first switch on the board (the other seven addresses always sequentially follow the initial address). The ad- dresses can be set from 1 to 2,044. Eight of the CV’s independently assign the eight output switches to the eight DCC addresses or to the photocells. Multiple switches can be programmed to respond to a single DCC address, so that the outputs can be ganged to oper- ate like an SPDT or DPST or DPDT or 4PDT or 8PST relay, or any combina- tion in between. Eight other CV’s set whether each switch is off or on at power-up, whether it is operated from the phase A or B flasher and whether the switch is to operate to the reverse of the input command. Two CV’s set the time intervals for the phase A and B flashers. The last four CV’s set the time duration of the single shot timers for the first four switches. A jumper on the circuit board is used to put the Aux-Box into the programming mode to set these CV’s. We tested the Aux-Box with a Digi-
Trax Super Chief DCC system. Every- thing worked as described in the Aux- Box manual without a hitch. Tests included turning on and off an old high-current, open-frame d.c. motor, and some large old Lionel tinplate bulbs from both a.c. and d.c. power supplies. We programmed flashing op- eration of a lighted cross-buck highway JUNE 2012
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