Finally, I found it very hard to find the slowest speeds, without hitting a dead stop or having the engine take off. To fix this requires adding resistors to the pot, one from each end to the wiper. This changes the tapered response of the linear pot to an inverted “S” curve which is pretty weird for normal use of a pot, but for a control which is center off, exactly what I wanted. Here’s a plot of how the response curve can be modified by simply adding resistors:
You can see how the slope is flatter around the center position, gradually gets steeper, and then sharply steeper at the extremes. This gives you a little dead zone around the off detent, and allows you to ease into that first speed steep, let’s you get to medium speed through most of the rotation, saving the highest speeds for the end (personally I never run that fast and would actually consider adding resistors to the ends of the pot, reserving its resolution for my actual usable range of speeds). Anyway, I like this changed response. Here’s where I added the resistors:
The result of these three changes, at least for me, completely transforms the experience of using the LionChief remote. I have a Lionel Universal Remote on order, I’ll definitely be taking a look at that one when it arrives.