The Mogollon Railroad

[nachoman]

Now that I can kinda/sorta operate my layout, having a power pack sitting on a shelf under the layout was a bit too inconvenient. Actually, not having something handheld was inconvenient, as I have to walk to the other side of the layout to do some uncoupling and throw switches. DCC went way, way down on my priority list because of unemployment, so I decided to build this little handheld throttle using a schematic I found on the net HERE.

I used as many parts as I had laying around, but wound up having to purchase a few components. I also slightly modified the design because the components I had were slightly different than what the schematic calls for. I drastically reduced the amount of "momentum", because I really don't like momentum throttles. I designed and etched a PCB for everything to fit on, and used the aluminum back plate of the project box as a heat sink for the voltage regulator. The cord is a standard telephone line cord, and I am using a phone jack to connect it to the layout.