Please indulge a basic question.....

a multimeter. Available at radio shack, home depot, etc....

Also, at least lionel (maybe others too) have made boxcars with a voltmeter and/or ammeter built into the side.

I agree with Boilermaker1. A volter meter is inexpensive and will do the trick. Plus you can use it for other things than checking track.

If your on a budget, and just what to see if you have voltage drop. You can attatch two wires to a 12 volt bulb, touch the wires to the track set at 12 volts,and just see if the light is dimmer in one place than another.

I tried to find that Big Bang video clip but was unable to do so.....

If you are testing for voltage drop,make sure you have the track under an electrical load. Otherwise the test is not effective. Meters cost from $8 to $10 that will do the job.

Dale H

I bought one of these.Works great!http://www.amazon.com/Gardner-...imeter/dp/B000NB85N0

Just hook up one of these and roll it around with a locomotive and a few cars, it'll give you readings under load.

In the High voltage industry we use a lot of voltage sensing equipment . It's so you don't have to actually touch the wire. I've seen them for 120 Volt but they usually won't give you a voltage reading just let know voltage is present.
That's a great Idea you've got John and wouldn't take any thing much other than a volt meter and an old caboose truck with a pick up.

Be darn nice to have to see if you have any dead spots especially around turn outs.
Now can anyone make one that will sense TMCC. I know that guy will be a millionaire


David

Get a voltmeter from Radio Shack for under $ 20.  They are invaluable for all things electric with O gauge layouts.

My car has an AC voltmeter on each side and I used two trucks with pickups to minimize dropouts.  The remaining step is to come up with some interesting decals for it.

I've actually changed the voltmeters since this picture was taken, these were DC and I was rectifying and attempting to "adjust" the voltage for AC RMS.  It wasn't that accurate.  The issue was that they used the same voltage they were measuring to power the meter, I didn't realize this when I got them.  That didn't work out all that well.

These are the voltmeters I'm now using.  50V AC Voltmeter.  They require an isolated DC supply, so I picked up one of these Isolated DC-DC Converter Modules to power them.  I feed it with a 12 volt regulated supply, three terminal regulator, cap, and bridge.

Not bad L5.99 is what about 12 bucks a pop? I might spring for those to mount on my MRC 270 dual . It has the analog volt and amp meters . I don't mind analog so much for the amps but  I'd like a little more accurate volt reading.

David

I got some analog volt and ammeters for my panel, I like them better than the digital for that purpose.  For viewing across the room, I figured the digital ones would be a bit easier to read.

If you live near a Harbor Freight, this meter is on sale right now for $4.  Here it's measuring track voltage within a few percent of a $300 Fluke meter.

If you do coupons from the Sunday paper or magazines, you can even get it Free or at least save another 20% making it about $3.  That should make it inexpensive enough.

As Dale says, the key is to measure the voltage when the track is loaded. While I suppose you could follow a slowly moving engine around your layout, perhaps the simplest might be to push a lighted passenger car (with incandescent bulbs - not the kind with LEDs) to the points of interest.

Well, for the technical minded, many IC chips that demodulate FSK have a pin called "RSSI" or Received Signal Strength Indicator.  It's a DC voltage proportional to carrier signal strength.  It's a logarithmic output or linear-in-dB which is what you want to measure wide dynamic range. In fact, some chip manufacturers call the RSSI pin "meter drive output" which gives you a clue.  A switch on your voltmeter car could select either the track voltage or the RSSI voltage from a 455 kHz receiver board. 

Now can anyone make one that will sense TMCC. I know that guy will be a millionaire

I'm waiting until someone actually gives me a development contract for a million, and I'll get right on it!

This really wouldn't be that hard, the Lionel R2LC has the circuitry to do this, and I'm pretty sure it didn't cost a million to design!

Well,
I can't say I'm brite enough to do it.
I can understand what you and stan are saying but when it comes to doing?
Well Davey can't read.
So when you two get one built I'm first in line.

David

Just remember, the first unit costs exactly $1,000,000.00, as agreed.

Okay but I'm paying in pennies and your counting

David

I'll just weigh the RR hoppers the money is delivered in.

If you enough pennies in the first 10 plastic hoppers of your long million $ money train it won't "stringline". Used to do that on my 30 hopper coal unit.

Yep, I learned long ago to put the heavy cars in the front.   Helps with the couplers coming apart too, reduces the average load.