Dale Manquen is still helping

To prepare for his excellent site disappearing, I did a site download of the whole site.  It totaled 640 megabytes, but I'll have the information in the future.

GRJ on another thread you suggested that the TMCC signal on an isolated track could be killed by grounding the outside rail to earth ground. This will not kill the signal if the track is isolated (powered by a separate transformer).

On my layout I was having signal problems where a lower level passed under an upper level. Dale suggested that I could ground my accessory lighting circuit (powered by a separate transformer) to earth ground. Since my upper level was powered by a separate transformer and I was only running conventional on this level I grounded the outside rail. This solved my signal problems on the lower level. Later I placed a command train on the upper level and it responded to TMCC commands with the outside rail connected to earth ground. Dale Manquen explained to me how this worked. The antenna was picking up the radiated signal from the lower level tracks.

At our local meets I have run three concentric loops with the center loop powered by a separate transformer with the outside rail connected to earth ground. TMCC trains run great on all three loops. In the past Dale has checked the TMCC level on all loops with his meter and reported a strong signal on all loops.

gunrunnerjohn posted:

To prepare for his excellent site disappearing, I did a site download of the whole site.  It totaled 640 megabytes, but I'll have the information in the future.

Thank you John.

What's the URL for Dale's site?  I'd like to go through it before it's gone.

Pennsylover

Pennsylover posted:

What's the URL for Dale's site?  I'd like to go through it before it's gone.

Pennsylover

I believe the main one is http://www.trainfacts.com/.

David Nissen posted:

GRJ on another thread you suggested that the TMCC signal on an isolated track could be killed by grounding the outside rail to earth ground. This will not kill the signal if the track is isolated (powered by a separate transformer).

I made the assumption that all the outside rails were common.  If that's the case, connecting it to earth ground should indeed kill any signal.

gunrunnerjohn posted:

To prepare for his excellent site disappearing, I did a site download of the whole site.  It totaled 640 megabytes, but I'll have the information in the future.

maybe ask the forum staff to host the info?

Thanks GRJ! I am sure it is much appreciated by the community!

I'm not totally sure about hosting the information publicly, that's an interesting question.  I suspect you might have to discuss that with Dale's heirs in order to legally offer it.  I'm sure that for private use it's no problem to have downloaded the info.  I just wanted to have it so it didn't disappear, at least there's the possibility that it could be published if we have it.

Dale' s website is quite the motherlode of information! Definitely worth preserving.