Rokuhan DC Controllers

I have both of the Rokuhan controllers and have used both for train shows and like them both.

The Rokuhan system follows the tried and well proven plug and play method of Kato in N-scale. The RC01 or C001 I have had for over a year receiving it from Rokuhan in October of 2010. It has two sources of power. 1. is a battery compartment that holds 8 x AA batteries. 2. a wall transformer Rokuhan P/n A011 rated for 100vac to 220vac 50 to 60 hz so it can be used on most household electrical systems, but may need a pin adaptor for use on 220vac systems. You can also use a wall transformer of your sourcing that produces 12vac at 800ma. When using the wall transformer the batteries are automatically disconnected. No you can not recharge the batteries in the case. The controller has one turnout control switch included in the case. It has a power ON Green LED and a RED LED to indicate when the internal circuit breaker has been tripped. Turning the main switch OFF and ON again resets the breaker. There is a track direction switch with Forward Off and Reverse. If when you first start running your tains it is going in the opposite direction you can fix this by removing the supply cord to the track and inserting it from the other side. There are English instrucitons in PDF form available from this link www.rokuhan.com/english/produ...er%20RC-01.pdf and a video showing the controller and it's operational features and it can be found at this link.

The output to the track is 10vdc at maximum 500ma which is enough to run 3 Micro Trains SD40-2 or GP35's or two F7's. or 2 Marklin Mikados or three D51 Mikados from Tenshodo. The control is very smooth and you can make engines crawl but there is not pulse power. the controller also has snaps on the side so you can stack additional turnout controllers to the side and power them. they can also be used for the Reverse loop controller coming soon. The batteries I have used are the better grade of AA the copper tops and I can operate 3 GPs with a 30 car freight for almost 12 hours on a set of batteries. This is what I have experienced but is not a guarantee that it will do that you as all my cars have steel wheels and my geeps are all tuned up for minimum current draw.

The RC02 I have only had for a couple of weeks and it came with its own wall transformer which is really small about the size of a 9v battery. again it is rated for 100vac to 220vac 50 to 60 Hz so should work with most systems, but may need an adapter for flat blades AC plus to match your own power system. This controller has all the features of the original RC01 but in a much smaller package. The battery compartment will take 8 x AA batteries. The AC wall transformer disconnects the batteries when plugged into the controller. Again you can not recharge the batteries from the AC supply. There is a video introducing the controller at this link


the main difference is this controller has a constant lighting feature. THis means that you can run the Rokuhan 113 DMU or a Tenshodo passenger train with lighting in the cars. THis past weekend a Ran a pair of C62 Hudsons with 8 passenger cars 2 with tail end lighting. The controller was able to handle that and we were probably a quarter of the way to internal circuit breaker limits of 800ma The Constant Lighting feature (CL)put an high frequency AC signal on the DC track voltage to power the interior car lighting when the track DC is zero. You adjust the starting voltage of your train so you can so you can stop train while cars stay lit including the head light and tail car . I did not use the batteries yet so not sure how long they would last running various rain combinations of engines and cars. This controller does not have a switch for controlling turnouts but does have the snap clips on the side for stacking C002 turnout controls or the future C003 for controlling reverse loops. The video shows the new controller being used to power the engines of several manufacturers So I think they have done their homework to ensure this controller will not harm anything that has been produced in Z scale to date. So it has been tested with brush less can motors. Marklin motors and small can motors of recent Japanese engine models. The instruction sheet that comes with the unit is in Japanese on one side and and English on the other side.

accessory wiring cables are available, an extension for the power cable which I recommend purchasing as the original track power cable I found to be too short for my layout which is only 2 x 4 ft. There is an extension for the turnout control cable as well. There is also a "Y" cable to connect two turnouts on a sing to one control switch so both turnouts are flipped at the same time. The Turnouts as currently supplied are power routing only, But there is a video on Rokuhan.com that shows how to change them to non power routing which is the same as Marklin and Micro Trains turnouts are supplied.

video showing difference


video showing how to change Rokuhan to non power routing


sharing the knowledge

regards Garth