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another (specific) dcc question...
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Yes, you can have more than one engine going at one time, with one throttle. I know a number of people who do that. By the way, I second buying a reversing loop unit as they aren't that expensive and they are a thousand times better than using a controller from Atlas. <br /> <br />The Zephry is a nice unit. Don't sweat the details, you'll be happy with it. <br /> <br />The reason for more than one block is so that if you have an electrical problem, you can trace it easier. Imagine your house or apartment or suite with all the wiring the house or whatever, all on one "block". So now you have an electrical problem, which wire is it. Basically with fuses or circuit breakers, in a way you are creating a block (actually a power district in the strict sense). <br /> <br />There are two types of blocks, harder ones and easier ones. The blocks we suggest are the easy ones. The hard blocks are linked up to toggle switches with lots of wiring so that you can select the throttle to run the train, more throttles the more wiring in one block. The easy blocks you just put some insulated rail joiners in one location or more locations to break your layout into blocks. Each block has one or more set of feeders. <br /> <br />This may sound hard, but the wiring is simple except for the reversing loop (which isn't that hard). You run two large wires underneath your layout down the center (call a power bus), then you solder your feeders to the rail and to the power bus. <br /> <br />So big wire underneath is A and the other one B. Your feeders on the one track is "1" and the other track is "2". So you solder track one feeder to power bus A and track 2 feeder to power bus B. DCC systems are happy with more feeders. If you don't know how to solder, it is actually easy to learn. You first 3 or 5 joints will be crappy after that you get the hang of it and you are away to the races.
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