MRC Tech 4 260
This is a power supply that has a "brake" and "momentum" button. I have an analog layout with a few DCC engines. I was told by a retailer that the "momentum" will actually burn a motor, any motor, because it will send too much power and then "hold" it until it gets up to full speed. Is this true? If so, what do I need to do? Thank you in advance. Pierre

Sounds like nonsense to me, Pierre. Momentum on a standard power pack is done using a capacitor which only slowly allows the control voltage to the power transistor to increase. It's the voltage coming from the power transistor which gets to the track, and there's no more there with momentum than when you turn up the dial slowly by hand. The one thing to be concerned about with pulse power packs like MRC's is that the voltage isn't smooth DC, but "spikey". Some types of motors don't like that and will overheat, like some coreless motors. This has nothing to do with the momentum effect, however. You may also have some problems with DCC locos running in analog mode, because pulse power can confuse the decoder into thinking it's receiving a DCC signal, which will kick in the DCC mode, which won't work, since there's no real signal there. You'll have to test them and see what happens there. I don't think the pulse power will do any damage, though. Jurgen