So why all the fuss with the handcars? It is all about improving performance and obtaining good control -- to eliminate stalling and achieve forward and reverse travel which handcars won't do in their original manufactured condition. (It may be surprising to those familiar with model trains that a handcar doesn't travel in reverse in its original condition.) A handcar, with a "can" motor, will operate so smoothly on 6 volt DC from a lantern battery that you'll wonder why they aren't quite as good on rectified AC. Well, as someone explained to me years ago, the DC from a battery is very smooth, perhaps the purest form of DC. Rectified AC, unless it is filtered, still lets some AC past the rectifier. A capacitor smoothes out the DC in a filtering circuit in a powerpack. In a handcar, it is just the little rectifier between the motor and the AC from the track. For the flywheel effect, the cap not only filters, it discharges when there is an interruption in power to the motor from dirty or rough track, or from a purposely dead section like those brief pieces in a switch or crossover. As the capacitor discharges, it keeps the motor turning for a split second, or longer. And the cap will discharge when power is intentionally cut.

     Unless you operate a handcar with the flywheel circuit, you'll never fully appreciate the improvement in operation. On a layout with switches and crossovers, an unaltered handcar may have trouble under the best circumstances. Add in some older, worn track and usual dead spots, then a handcar won't navigate what your most temperamental engine can do with ease. But with these improvements, the handcar runs very well, just by adding the reversing board and bi-polar cap in a trailing car. The original drive mechanism and motor of the handcar are unchanged, just the electronics are added and electrical pick up is extended over a broader area. (But just adding the trailing ore car isn't enough, but better.)

     If you want full control like a locomotive, then you'll need to make the change. Capacitors have their failings, but used with reasonable care, they are great. And with a coupler on a handcar, you can actually shuffle cars around. There is a great sense of satisfaction when you have such nice control. And the handcar seems to just glide along! (It has been said that the Lionel handcars are the most temperament of all, but Lionel has the best cartoon characters.)

     If you want to remove the rectifier and just run it on DC, then you'll get bi-directional travel, but you can't run it on AC anymore (or you may add a tiny switch to bypass the rectifier for reversing with DC and still maintain AC operation when the rectifier is not bypassed). You may wonder why we toy train people run on AC when DC would give us such great control just by reversing polarity. Well, it is about backward compatibility and some features like blowing a whistle from a transformer button (which uses a little DC on the AC rails), and a few other advantages. I wanted to be able to have full layout access while running other AC trains, so this change was necessary. (For unaltered handcars, the addition of a resistor (approx. 10-16 ohms) in series with the motor will reduce a handcar's speed to a more manageable level, especially with older transformers where output starts at about 7-8 volts.) Essentially, your handcar is now a locomotive!