Yup, You guessed it another DCC question

[Duce]

Okay,
I am building my layout and I am not far from being done with the double mains I have. I am going to get the zepher from digitrak as my DCC system. I was reading before I started my layout that DCC does not need the "blocks" like the old dc system. So I have not insulated or blocked any of the tracks so far.[:p]
Am I going to have to go back and insulate the tracks? I plan on having 2 double crossovers that are not on the layout yet for the two mains. Am I missing something? Did I get misinformed? Help me out before I go any further.
Thanks,
Cary

[MisterBeasley]

No, you should be OK, as long as your layout doesn't get too big.

DCC needs insulated blocks for 2 things. The first is reversing loops, which work just like they do in DC. You've got to insulate both ends of the loop where track wraps back on itself, and the left rail ends up attached to the right rail.

The other situation is the "power district." In some layouts, the amount of track and the number of engines gets large enough that more power is needed, so a "power booster" is added. The track section controlled by this booster needs to be isolated from other such sections.

It doesn't hurt to insulate sections now, though. If you are putting in a double crossover, that would be a logical point to install insulators for future use. For now, though, wire the tracks as if they were all together.

[Anonymous]

MB got it pretty much spot on. The only reason I have blocks on my layout is for trouble shooting. If there is a short, I can isolate the block that has the problem instead of checking the whole layout.

[Duce]

cool Okay thanks guys

[rrinker]

I sorta planned ahead, but not enough ahead. I have 3 power busses running around my layout, one for the outer main, one for the inner main, and one for the yard. The crossovers between the mains have insulated joiners, and also the entrance to the yard. All set for multiple power districts, they terminate at a power strip. I have jumpers on it connecting all three together since all i have is the Zephyr. Of course, I got to the point where I want to also install deteion for signalling much sooer than I planned - I figured that wouldn;t happen til i got much furhter in building, filling upt he rest of the basement. So now I need to go back and cut gaps for detection sections, and wire all the feeders from each section to a sub-bus instead of the main bus. So it might be a good idea, if you plan to eventually incorporate detection and signalling, to plan where the detection sections will be and gap appropriately.

--Randy

[rolleiman]

There are 2 kinds of reverse loops.. The obvious one where the track comes back on itself (or a wye situation) and an electrical one where polarity gets crossed (short circuit).. Just make sure those double crossovers don't cause a short circuit.. It will depend on the turnouts and crossings you use but just in case,

[image]http://www.rolleiman.com/trains/double.jpg[/image]

Where you see red and blue cross, has to be insulated.

Good luck,
Jeff

[Anonymous]

Cary,

If you plan on storing trains on sidings or in staging , you might want to isolate those tracks so that you can cut power to the decoders not in use. While this isn't necessary using DCC, it is nice to not have decoders (that are not in active use) subjected to power surges from shorts. It also cuts down on the possibility of adding to the in rush of current that the booster sees after a short as all the capacitors charge up (speaking mainly sound here). This can be enough to cause problems if you were to have a bunch of BLI sound locos in storage (we should all be so lucky to have this problem).

You could isolate bunches of tracks with one buss. Because locos don't move in DCC unless spoken to, you don't have to cut off all of the tracks individually. When you want to move a train out of storage, you can turn on all the tracks, move the train and kill the power again. This will still have the effect of keeping the decoders not in use powered down without having the hassle of wiring each track to a different block. I did this in my helix staging. Works pretty well.