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I've been around MRR all my life. My grandpa and my dad built a large layout in grandpa's basement when they found out I was coming along... I had a couple of "toy" layouts when I was a kid, was away from MRR for a while during college, and now in my mid 30's, kids of my own, and dad and I are working on a large layout in the basement again... Point being, I wired and ran DC stuff all my life. When we started to set up the new layout, there were some boxes in the basement that dad brough over when I moved out and built a new house... The boxes were full of stuff that grandpa had saved for me from his layout - transformers, switches, 100's of feet of brass code 100 flex track, and this really huge aluminum plate with toggle switches installed on them... I took one look at that and decied right then and there that I was going DCC - didn't want the kids to have to learn about blocks and worry about throwing all of those switches. I wanted them to enjoy the layout. That said, I have used/owned 2 different DCC systems - the MRC Prodigy Advanced and the Digitrax Zephyr. I had a bunch of problems when I used the Advanced, but I think it was due to some bad MRC decoders, not the DCC system itself. But alas, I sold the Prodigy and bought a Digitrax Zephyr and have been really happy with it so far - but I also haven't bought any more MRC decoders - using all Digitrax stuff now. I'm sure the MRC DCC stuff is good quality, but for me, the Digitrax worked out great, and the kids can use it (under supervision), and my pops has even figured it out. And installing decoders in locos yourself realyl isn't too hard. Some take more time to take the shell off the frame than it does to install the decoder, like a P2K plug and play model decoder from Digitrax. Some are more challenging, like the old Athearn's, but even then, it only took my about 1/2 hour to install, including changing the light. Basically, I found that if I was patient and thought about what I was doind, that htings worked out really well. Don't be intimidated by DCC - there are lots of great people on the board that will help you, as they did for me.
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