CTC machine

[banjobenne1]

I am retired, I get a hundred bucks a month to spend on my hobby. My railroad club is talking about DCC. What I really want to do is build a CTC machine for the clubs' railroad, and I want to be able to use it for DCC or DC. I have seen Bruce Chubbs article in the 84 Model Railroader how he build his machine. What about the updates since then? I want to get a handle how much this is going to cost. I will leave the DCC part to those who want to install it. For right now we will assume the layout will remain DC.

[rrinker]

There was an update set of articles in the Jan-Apr issues of MR last year. Bruce has updated his big manual that explains everything. That should be your first stop. Cost is goign to depend on how much you want to build yourself. The cheapest way is to get the boards from Bruce and buy the parts yourself from the major supply houses listed. You can buy complete kits with all parts, or even fully assembled boards from Easee-Interfaces, but it will cost more that way. You should also go to Yahoo Groups and join the C/MRI Group there. Lots of good information.
Depending on your level of electronic skill, you cna mix ad match pieces instead of using all JLC parts. For example, there are at least two other block detectors that have outputs compatible with the C/MRI interface cards that cost a LOT less than Bruce's DCCOD.

--Randy

[CBQ_Guy]

Here are some links in my bookmark file I got back after doing a search on CTC which may be of some use to you. Hope they are helpful.

http://www.clearblockahead.com/
http://www.ctcparts.com/
http://www.ctcparts.com/index.html
http://www.trainpriority.com/
http://factcheck.org/
http://ctcparts.com/

[Anonymous]

If you can get your hands on Allen Keller's #9 video, check it out. It's a tour of Rick Rideouts L&N layout. Rideout owns Rix Products and he sells knob kits for CTC machines. He explains how his CTC machine works in the video. Unfortunately video #9 has sold out and is not available from Keller's web site. And for some reason will not make more copies. I know, I asked.