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My husband decided to stay home from last Monday's gathering of our round-robin club because he wasn't feeling well. Too bad! I showed up and as I was saying "Hi" a radio DCC throttle was shoved into my hand by our host. Ok, I'm gonna run a train, no big deal...Then he announces that a double header is ready to roll, and that our friend George will be on the other engine.....Other engine???? Turns out we were going to run this 40 foot long O scale train the way the REAL steam engineers did...each loco independantly operated. The train was so long that neither loco could pull it alone, they had to work in syncrony. Getting started was a real challenge. Each throttle was set up with slightly different momentum effects, and each loco , an SP GS series 4-8-4, and SP 2-10-4 also had different throttle lineararity. We had to watch the driver wheels for slipping, and the mating coupler for crushing. GEEZE it was hard at first. Eventually we got the train running pretty smooth. The feedback system in the DCC would maintain the speed uphill our downhill with no throttle input, so George and I began to relax and enjoy just watching the train go by. . Once it got easy, a monky wrench was thrown in . A passenger train was dispatched with yet another engineer, to cruse the main line between the end of our train and the locos. OK, that would not be a big deal excpet that every so often the dispatcher wanted to let it go by, so we had to slow our train and stop on a LONG siding [ actually the yard bypass lead] , allowing the crack passenger train to go by and then we had to start 'er up again. It became totally clear that this kind of realistic train driving could ONLY be done with DCC. [:D] I had never experienced anything like this in many decades of model RRing! It was challenging and great fun. If you have ever thought about DCC but couldn't imagine a real need for it, just think..the session we just had would be outright impossible with traditional DC cab control. As we closed our session for the evening, our host warned me that this was just a training session [pun intended] because next time the double header would have one loco in front, and one positioned as a helper in the rear. I am already imagining 30 or 40 O scale freight cars falling to the floor...We had better be careful! Jennifer
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