Power Cut

Mention was previously made, prematurely, of a brilliant idea that I had to power the Class 121 Bubblecar either from DCC or from on board batteries. To this end I purchased a 9v battery holder, several DPDT switches, and drew a ridiculously complicated wiring diagram to allow me to switch from DCC to battery and then switch direction at will. After drilling many holes in the floor to thread wires through, and fixing most of the components to the underneath of the body, I finally got round to testing what I should have checked in the first place - namely, that a 9v battery would actually be powerful enough to run the Bubblecar. It isn't. So all that has now been stripped out again, and I'm going to install my standard setup of Lenz Gold DCC chip, Power 1 USP device and Uhlenbrock SUSI sound chip. I also managed to fit in another day of running in the garden, and found that the braking distances on all four locos are still set far too high and it's rather difficult to judge when to back off the throttle to actually stop anywhere without overshooting. CV tweaking time, I think...