scenario:
12v car battery
mth ps2 or ps3 loco... no need for bell or whistle
I buy a 12-60v 10amp pwm motor controller board
question:
can I hookup the controller to the battery and run my MTH ps2 or ps3 loco conventionally without damaging the electronics in the loco? I understand that 12v will limit top speed...(might put together an 18v dc battery)
seems like it might work better than using an inverter to bring 12v dc to 120vac, then using a transformer to control the train..
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Well, for starters PS-3 can be set for DCC operation. So, running on DC is possible. As for a PWM motor controller, while it would be effective for motor-only operation, I would have serious concerns about how the onboard electronics would respond.
As the name implies you're switching the voltage to the motor on/off. Voltage remains constant. The longer the pulse is "on", the higher the average voltage seen by the motor. Technically, this does not function as a transformer.
I suspect it would probably work. Since the electronic transformers do something very similar with the AC voltage, chopping the waveform down. Since the first step inside is to run that track voltage into DC, I would think PWM would work as well as AC.
I could be wrong, I've never tried it, but on the surface it seems that it would work, I don't see any obvious holes in the idea.
You'd probably have to turn the sound off because you'd have a permanent DC offset. 
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