Hi all
Have anyone tried to see how long distance
locos with buffer capasitor can bridge?

Thanks John for your answer
I dident even think about stop sections
But what can make a track be powerless for so short distance?

I had never thought about buffer capacitors and modern model railway software. Normally, when I calibrate a loco the braking effect has to be turned off as the software itself controls the rate of acceleration and braking. This way the software is able to bring the loco into a station within millimetres of the expected stop. I think that the difference here is that there needs to be an actual power loss to trigger the buffer capacitor, but in digital control the power is constantly on, even when the loco is stopped, which means that it should not "activate" the buffer capacitor.

Stop sections that actually take away the power are a very different story - fortunately, I don't (or didn't) use them on my layout.

For the ESU loksound 5 decoder with power pack the manual says that the time for the power to be active can be set with the value from 0-255. Each increment giving a time of 0.032768 seconds. So 255 would give a bit more than 8 seconds of run time (in theory at least). The factory preset is a value of 127 (4 seconds).

One story is computer control where locos always get track power, but are told to stop.
A different story is using signals that simply turn off track power to stop locos. That's when the buffer capacitors can lead to problems. Two seconds at full speed might come up to 1 meter.

With regular capacitors, we usually talk about values around 0.0002 F. You still should add a resistor and a diode. No decoder support required. Will only support small bits of dirt and then needs time to recharge, so a series of small bits could already be too much.

With the new power packs, we talk about a capacity of typically 1 F and the pack must be supported by the decoder, so mixing is not possible. More power by a factor of 100+.

How does a capacitor release its energy?

Is it as a quick impulse or is it like a regular battery that releases the current over a period of time!

Will the voltage be the same as the one that charges it!

No. First of all the capacitor needs to be bi-polar, since you don't know which way the loco is running,
and since the motor usually is controlled by a PWM signal, you can't mount a capacitor, it will ruin the PWM...

Per.