# E-Z Command problem?



## cdboar (Nov 21, 2012)

Apologies - this may be a long post, I will attempt to be brief!

I am in the process of building a small HO set-up - 8' x 4'. I laid out the track on the board initially to mark locations etc but could not resist to run my trains around the loop a couple of times. Each ran well under DCC control. Because it was only temporay, I just applied power to the track at one point in the layout. 

Last time I played with trains in my youth, I never had any DCC. So even with the E-Z Command (cheapest I could find) it worked pretty well.

Over the last couple of days I have run some 14 guage cable under the board and added feeder cables (smaller cables) to the tracks in 7 different places. Honestly I think this is overkill given the size of the layout, but it did not seem to be a bad thing to do.

So I powered up the layout with the E-Z Command feeding into my new bus and feeders. It works, but the trains did not run as fast, comparing max throttle before to max throttle now.

To cut a long story short, I decided to test the E-Z Command on a piece of 36" track with one train on it. Ie - removed all of the track and cabling from the equation to see if it was the controller itself.

The train still ran slow. This leads me to think the E-Z Command controller is faulty - although it does function normally with the exception of the slower speed of the trains. I have opended the controller - but can see no visible signs of overheating. With nothing on the track, my digital volt meter reads about 18V AC across the rails. When a train is on the track and moving it reads about 10V AC. I know using a digital meter like this is not perhaps conclusive but its all I have to test with. Btw - I did test both of my main trains on the separate flex track.

Any ideas on what I can do?
(Apart from buy a new controller!)


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## cv_acr (Oct 28, 2011)

Slower compared to what? Running the same engine on straight DC power?

Is the engine equipped with a decoder or are you using a feature of the command station to run the engine on address "0"? (I'm not sure if EZ Command has this feature, not all systems support it anymore.)


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## cdboar (Nov 21, 2012)

Compared to about 2 weeks earlier running the same engine on DCC with the E-Z Command controller.

I don't run anything on DC now.

So same E-Z Command controller, same engines, with same decoder chips inside but I am getting approx half the max throttle speed from the engines now.

Does that make it clear?

I automatically assumed it was the wiring work I had done, but testing on the flex track alone and the engines still run slower than before.

Thanks for reading!


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