Select Controller

[KELVIN-377575]

Will my select run 4 locomotives safely at the same time . Only basic DCC . no sound . just two diesel locomotives with lights. My old select is only version 1.2

[P-Henny]

The Select is capable of sending commands to four or more locomotives to control them.

Technically, if your fingers were dexterous enough and one had the mental agility. You could use the Select to control 59 locos concurrently subject to power being available to support that. In reality, that scenario is very unlikely to ever be implemented.

The question should be, does my Select default 1 Amp power supply have enough current to operate 4 locomotives concurrently.

The answer is 'it depends'.

The Select itself needs to consume some of that 1 Amp of current, then what is left has to power the locomotives plus any accessories that you might be powering. Some locos draw more, some draw less. Whether your 4 locos will run reliably with a 1 Amp supply is a 'suck it and see' scenario.

To guarantee the support of 4 locos, I suggest you upgrade the 1 Amp power supply to Hornby's P9300 4 Amp power supply.

I would also recommend that your 1.2 version Select is upgraded by Hornby to version 1.6. Cost is about £15 plus your sending postage. A "Returns" number is needed from Hornby Customer Services. Version 1.6 gives full support for all Functions 1 to 28 plus the ability to write to all CVs from 1 to 255. It would also provide more reliable support for some non Hornby decoders.

[96RAF]

As part of a test to see how many (non-sound) locos each PSU could drive, I set up 3 loops initially with 2 locos on each loop facing each other buffer to buffer. Each loops locos had the same address for the test. I then throttled up each pair together, loop 1, then loop 2, then loop 3. To add load to the 4-amp PSU I simply added more locos.

The 1-amp PSU gave up at 4 locos (2 loops) doing this reverse tug of war and the 4-amp PSU had 4 locos in each loop and was still providing power at 12 locos (3 loops) . I didn't measure the actual current they were pulling but it assured me it was adequate power to run the trains I was likely to have on track.