DCC questions

[Anonymous]

Since I'm thinking of doing DCC, I have some questions. I was wondering, after you program a locomotive, do you have to program it everytime you turn on your system? How do you isolate power districts? My last question is, i'm thinking of buying the CVP EasyCommand system, since it's only $300 dollors, does it require certain decoders or can you use any other decoders? Thanks for your support.
Zach d:-D
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[Anonymous]

Hi Zach;

1) Once a locomotive is programmed, that's it. You don't have to program it again. Just remember that if you program a second locomotive, take the first one of the track or you will re-program the first one to be just like your second one.

2) Unless you've got a fairly large layout, you don't need power districts.

3) I'm not familiar with the CVP system, but I can still answer your question: All decoders are compatible. I have both soundtraxx and digitraxx decoders running on my railroad.

Hope this helps!

[cacole]

If you mean the CVP Easy DCC system, I have one that I use to program and test decoders, and a friend of mine has one with the wireless throttle for his home layout. As the name says, it's "Easy" DCC -- now if they could just learn how to write an understandable manual for it.....

Any decoder with work with any other company's system as long as both comply with the NMRA DCC Standards and Recommended Practices. I have used NCE, Lenz, Digitrax, TCS, SoundTraxx, QSI, etc. with Easy DCC with absolutely no compatibility problems.

[jfugate]

I have an EasyDCC system and recommend it highly. Once you program the locos, they stay programmed.

You isolate power districts by cutting gaps in both rails and then hook that section of track to a different power booster.

Also, I will be giving a clinic at the National in Seattle next week and will be describing in quite a bit of detail how to wire your DCC layout to make it extremely "short proof".

Beyond just separate power boosters on different power districts, I will be showing how you can short proof the layout to the point that only the train that causes a short will stop and all the other trains, EVEN IN THE SAME POWER DISTRICT will keep on running. Once you have it set up, it works really slick!

If you can't make Seattle, I will be posting my clinic handouts on the yahoo groups list for my layout after the convention (probably show up there in a couple of weeks). See:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/siskiyouline/