Questions about the MRC DCC System

[JDCoop]

Nigel,

Thanks for the reply. After checking out the wiring, we were pretty much arrived at the conclusion that the system just didn't have enough backbone to carry the signal through our daisy-chain. My friend actually got to talk to the engineering department at MRC today and they recommended to wire the jacks in a loop so that the signal would basically travel to all of the jacks in both directions. We are going to give this a shot this weekend (heck, we've got nothing to lose at this point.) I'll post an update next week to indicate if this works or not. MRC was pretty confident of this solution. They did say that if there was a wire that was losing its signal that it was wire no. 8 as it has the weakest signal (although I have no idea which part of the system that no. 8 controls.) Anyway, I just wanted to post a reply to thank you for responding to my post.

Jeff

[nfmisso]

Jeff;

You are trying to work with a system that was not designed or intended to do what you want to do with it. Kinda like trying to pull a 53' semi-trailer with a ½ ton pick up.....

Other systems use signal boosters.... You may be able to get away with just adding DC power to the appropriate two of the eight wires in your throttle bus, like Digitrax does, so that power for the throttle is coming from each plug in, instead of all the way from the base. I do not know which wires you would do this too. See: http://www.digitrax.com/up5.htm

This is the reason you see so many people suggesting not getting the MRC system, there are not the extras there to support expansion like there are for Atlas (Lenz) and Digitrax Zephyr.

[JDCoop]

I have a friend who has installed a MRC DCC system on his layout and is having some problems. His layout is about 18 x 50 and has 5 reversing loops (each wired with the MRC Reversing Loop Module). In addition to the MRC DCC station, he also has the 8 amp booster. Feeder drops are installed approximately every 6 feet. When the control is plugged into the base unit everything works fine. He installed two extension lines (out of a possible 4) with plug-ins every 8 foot. He used 8 stand wire and installed plugs on the end of each set of wires and then "bunny hops" to the next plug-in off the previous plug-in. This is where the fun starts. When plugging the controls into the plug-ins, nothing works as it should. So the first thing we thought was that there was a problem with the wiring. We checked continuity at each plug-in with a tester that is designed for 8 wire plugs. Each and every plug-in as well as each wire in the plug-in tests OK for continuity. There are no staples in the wires as the wires were run through plastic loops on the bottom of the layout. There are no reversed wires on the backs of the plug-ins. There are no stray wires inadvertanty touching or crossing as he crimped the plugs on the ends of each set of wires. This thing is completely driving us crazy. My 2nd inclination (a wiring problem being my 1st inclination) is that the signal is being degraded through the wiring and plugs (I don't know what gauge wire he is using). The booster boosts the signal through the track, but there is no booster from the base through (and to) the plugs (I believe that this is how the whole booster thing works...). Has anyone experienced any difficulty extending the MRC systems out across a layout. We know of a couple of others who use the same system, but their layout is small enough that they simply control everything from the base (and like I said, we can control everything from his base unit, but we would rather be able to walk around the layout). Any help or insight would be greatly appreciated. At this point, we are out of ideas and really frustrated and any direction that anyone could point us in would be helpful. Oh, he did contract MRC and about all they told him in his phone call is that they couldn't guarantee anything would work past the base unit (and neither of us expected them to since it's our wiring and not theirs, but they kind of thought there were other issues beyond their system). I hope I didn't leave out any important info that would be necessary to solving this problem. Thanks!

Jeff