Hi all,

My favorite Legacy feature is the amazing slow speed control. Is anyone able to explain what enables these locos to run so slowly and smoothly? Were modifications done to the motor or gearing? Is this improvement all electronic?

eliot

quote:

Originally posted by scherbear57:
Hi all,

My favorite Legacy feature is the amazing slow speed control. Is anyone able to explain what enables these locos to run so slowly and smoothly? Were modifications done to the motor or gearing? Is this improvement all electronic?

eliot

Jon Z! It's probably the fact that there are far more speed steps created by the new flywheel sensor. Also from talking to Jon at York I'm pretty sure software has a hand in this as well.

The flywheel sensor helps a TON. Lou Kovach designed an incredible sensor system. This system allows for very slow speed operation of the motor. We can even open this sensor for more rotational data, and the upcoming switcher products will demonstrate this with speeds 1/2 of the road engine speeds!

Of course we have a lot of software to back up this hardware, including some unique architecture I brought to Lionel on servo systems (I came from the disk drive industry, where servo's were a way of life for a microcode engineer!). This software technology also was first developed on the Cruise Commander products, and represents years of design efforts.

I can't take credit for all of the Odyssey software, I just refined the code to bring the final product into the operation you have today in Legacy. I still find time to review each Legacy loco's operation and adjust the code as needed to make certain the best user experience is delivered.

Jon,

Thanks so much for your explanation. If I understand you correctly, the upcoming switchers will run even more slowly than the locos I have already (FEF, Big Boy, GS-4). That sounds great. I wonder if the couplers will allow coupling securely at such slow speeds. Up until now, I have needed higher speeds to couple than the slower speeds Legacy allows.

eliot