18.0 Stealing: When An Address Is Running on
Another Throttle
Digitrax systems do not allow more than one user to select and run the
same locomotive address unless the loco is “stolen” by the new user.
When an address is receiving commands from more than one throt-
tle, it may seem to be out of control.
Stealing is a safety interlock that prevents operators from automatically
taking control of locos that are already selected and being run on
another throttle. Occasionally you may need to override this inter-
lock to gain control of a loco. This override is called stealing & will
result in having a single loco address selected on two different throt-
tles at the same time.
For example, if you are running a train on a particular loco address at
25% throttle and another operator is running the same loco address
but sending a stop command you will see the train stop unexpected-
ly. From your perspective, the train is not behaving correctly so you
would probably increase your throttle setting and the train would
begin moving again. From the other operators perspective, the train
is moving again so it is not responding to his/her commands. Since
the other operator wants to stop the train, he or she is likely to send
the command again since the train is now moving again. As you can
see,. having two engineers on the same train can give strange opera-
tions. For this reason, Digitrax interlocks locomotive selection so
that you can’t take control of a loco that is already selected on
another throttle without “stealing” the address.
If you try to select a loco address that is already selected on another throttle in
the system, the DCS50 will display StLo to let you know that if you want to
select that loco you will have to “steal” it. StLo means Steal Loco?
To steal an address just press the LOCO Key to select the loco on your
throttle.
Once a throttle has “stolen” a loco address, both throttles with the
address selected will update speed and direction information for the
loco address. This can result in strange locomotive behavior espe-
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