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More DCC qestions ???
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<p>Scrap everything you remember about DC.</p><p>DCC means AC wave power on the rails "FULL" time for the purpose of carrying information to and from a locomotive.</p><p>I use a power supply, command station and a throttle from Digitrax. Others will tell you about thier systems. My Buses are divided this way:</p><p>Track Bus Rail A and Rail B These get 14 AWG wire and Im preparing to install 18 ga AWG feeders. I plan to cheat by not soldering these feeders to the rail joints. The wires will go directly under the joined rails.</p><p>Switches are Kato Unitrack tied to DS64 control with thier own wall power supply. There is a network called "Loconet" using what I call 6 wire "Ethernet" cable connecting everything so that the Command Station can understand what is happening.</p><p>Signalling will have it's own power supply totally isolated from the railroad except for block detectors. Let's not worry about that now.</p><p>To me, a Block in the old DC speak = Power district in DCC.</p><p>Example... Yard. It is all one "Block" or Power district. It is protected by a circut breaker so that if anything happens INSIDE the yard it will not stop the mainline traffic or any other power district.</p><p>Get books as many for DCC as you can and read. Read them again and learn as you go.</p><p>DCC is a method of picking one specific engine inside a roundhouse full of engines and "Driving it" wherever you want without interfering with other engines at all or worrying about who has which block.</p><p>I have a stable full of QSI equippted engines, one loksound engine and two analogs that will recieve thier own decoders.</p><p>The brand is irrevelant however.... MRC does not do a good job with decoders. BLI may produce quality engines but they are doing thier own thing with Blueline. Also the BLI/PCM problem is that of waiting for engines. I just found out my 2-10-0 with 8 Axle tender order has now been re-scheduled from Nov 08' delivery to... March of 08' and AGAIN to June of 08' that is after waiting one + years after the announcment.</p><p>Get the engines when they are availible not waiting 2 years or more, if ever.</p><p>Kato? Get em if you like em.</p><p>Athearn Blue Box? By the time you buy the decoder and learn to install it with all the associated tools you are approaching the cost of a RTR Engine such as the Genesis or similar engine.</p><p>Your decisions. Ask as many questions as you can because if you make a mistake, you can do some damage or start really expensive problems in DCC.</p>
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