Seperate Forum for DCC?

[jwwhite]

Would there be any interest in a seperate forum dedicated exclusively to DCC? I don't want to open Pandora's Box here, with too many suggestions for too many new forums, but might we also investigate the possibility of additional forums for such things as Locomotives, Rolling Stock, Scenery, Electrical, etc? I participate in a number of other, non-Model Railroad, forums, and have seen too many of them get too fragmented, so there would have to be some limits to the granularity of subjects, but it might be helpful to segregate the "General Discussion" heading into more focused and deliberate threads.

Moderator, what say you?[?]

[jwwhite]

Would there be any interest in a seperate forum dedicated exclusively to DCC? I don't want to open Pandora's Box here, with too many suggestions for too many new forums, but might we also investigate the possibility of additional forums for such things as Locomotives, Rolling Stock, Scenery, Electrical, etc? I participate in a number of other, non-Model Railroad, forums, and have seen too many of them get too fragmented, so there would have to be some limits to the granularity of subjects, but it might be helpful to segregate the "General Discussion" heading into more focused and deliberate threads.

Moderator, what say you?[?]

[Anonymous]

From experiences on other forums, I think you are better off waiting for a really busy forum, then fragmenting it more. A fragmented forum changes the feel of a forum when posts start to dwindle. A forum that has some reasonable traffic, but with lots of fragmentation feels as though it isn't busy at all; so you need a really busy forum to fragment it a lot.

Some participants like slower forums, but more seem to enjoy high traffic. I prefer busier forums. Having a separate forum for layout design is smart as you want the thread to hang around for a while so that you can have a chance to think about what you might recommend or suggest to the person and various people from different scales can give positive input.

This forum is still a bit to slow for my tastes - by slow I mean participation - but since I whined and moaned about a new forum and one has been provided; I will support the new forum for a year or so in the hopes that traffic will pick up; which I'm sure it will.

[Anonymous]

From experiences on other forums, I think you are better off waiting for a really busy forum, then fragmenting it more. A fragmented forum changes the feel of a forum when posts start to dwindle. A forum that has some reasonable traffic, but with lots of fragmentation feels as though it isn't busy at all; so you need a really busy forum to fragment it a lot.

Some participants like slower forums, but more seem to enjoy high traffic. I prefer busier forums. Having a separate forum for layout design is smart as you want the thread to hang around for a while so that you can have a chance to think about what you might recommend or suggest to the person and various people from different scales can give positive input.

This forum is still a bit to slow for my tastes - by slow I mean participation - but since I whined and moaned about a new forum and one has been provided; I will support the new forum for a year or so in the hopes that traffic will pick up; which I'm sure it will.

[ironhorseman]

For DCC I'd might like to a new forum folder because this DCC stuff seems technical, complicated and confusing to me. I've been out of the model RRing loop for a while. Oh, I go to the shows and stores and stuff but haven't had a permanent layout (as a college student I didn't have time or space or money to build one).

I read the articles on DCC today and was even more confused. It seems unneccessary to someone who's more interested in building scenery than running 8 locomotives simultaneously. I realize DCC lets you run trains more realistically, but that's why I bought Microsoft Trainsimulator. I model railroad because I like building things.

Just out of curiosity, is there anybody left out there who still operates layouts the old fashioned way? I've seen books at the library that date back to the 1970s and '80s and it looks like a great deal of tricky wiring was involved. Does going digital require any funny wiring techniques on the tracks or locomotives?

Thanks in advance for any info anyone can provide.

[ironhorseman]

For DCC I'd might like to a new forum folder because this DCC stuff seems technical, complicated and confusing to me. I've been out of the model RRing loop for a while. Oh, I go to the shows and stores and stuff but haven't had a permanent layout (as a college student I didn't have time or space or money to build one).

I read the articles on DCC today and was even more confused. It seems unneccessary to someone who's more interested in building scenery than running 8 locomotives simultaneously. I realize DCC lets you run trains more realistically, but that's why I bought Microsoft Trainsimulator. I model railroad because I like building things.

Just out of curiosity, is there anybody left out there who still operates layouts the old fashioned way? I've seen books at the library that date back to the 1970s and '80s and it looks like a great deal of tricky wiring was involved. Does going digital require any funny wiring techniques on the tracks or locomotives?

Thanks in advance for any info anyone can provide.

[Anonymous]

Not only do I think there should be a separate forum for DCC, I think there should be a lot of different forums. It is a pain to wade through 19 pages of topics under the "General" heading. For Model Railroading, there are only four forums:
General - 2668 topics with 14,434 posts
Layouts - 18 topics with 131 posts
New Products - 8 topics with 59 posts
Prototype Info - 11 topics with 32 posts
This seems insane (or very poor organization) to me. Forums should be divided into approximately equal size. OK, the "General" or miscellaneous may be somewhat larger, but not 148 times bigger (based on topics) than the next largest forum!!!

[Anonymous]

Not only do I think there should be a separate forum for DCC, I think there should be a lot of different forums. It is a pain to wade through 19 pages of topics under the "General" heading. For Model Railroading, there are only four forums:
General - 2668 topics with 14,434 posts
Layouts - 18 topics with 131 posts
New Products - 8 topics with 59 posts
Prototype Info - 11 topics with 32 posts
This seems insane (or very poor organization) to me. Forums should be divided into approximately equal size. OK, the "General" or miscellaneous may be somewhat larger, but not 148 times bigger (based on topics) than the next largest forum!!!

[Anonymous]

Separating DCC from the rest of the topics would reduce it's exposure to the general modeling public, not a good thing. It's been my experience that the more people know about it, the more they like it. On the other hand, a modeller who know little about the subject is unlikely to look at a separate DCC forum

[Anonymous]

Separating DCC from the rest of the topics would reduce it's exposure to the general modeling public, not a good thing. It's been my experience that the more people know about it, the more they like it. On the other hand, a modeller who know little about the subject is unlikely to look at a separate DCC forum

[Anonymous]

If you look down the discussion list, the idea for a separate DCC forum (as well as different scale forums) was both proposed and then rejected by the MR forum staff.

I will let you find and read their response (reasons for not doing so) without repeating it here:

http://www.trains.com/community/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=5710&SearchTerms=separate%2Cforums

I still think it is a good idea - the BEST MRR forum on the web does do this (which is the Atlas forum, in case you didn't know).

[Anonymous]

If you look down the discussion list, the idea for a separate DCC forum (as well as different scale forums) was both proposed and then rejected by the MR forum staff.

I will let you find and read their response (reasons for not doing so) without repeating it here:

http://www.trains.com/community/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=5710&SearchTerms=separate%2Cforums

I still think it is a good idea - the BEST MRR forum on the web does do this (which is the Atlas forum, in case you didn't know).

[MRTerry]

This is indeed an idea that we've knocked around. Right now we're hoping that DCC questions find a home in the layouts/layout building section, and we may edit the names of the forums a bit to make that clearer.
As to why the numbers of posts are so unbalanced right now, that's because everything from the old forums was transferred to "general."
And as to why we don't differentiate by scales, we're still convinced (and our research shows pretty definitively) that a lot of guys have multiple interests - and we think that we can all learn from each other, regardless of our scale(s) of choice.
Thanks for reading MR,
Terry

[MRTerry]

This is indeed an idea that we've knocked around. Right now we're hoping that DCC questions find a home in the layouts/layout building section, and we may edit the names of the forums a bit to make that clearer.
As to why the numbers of posts are so unbalanced right now, that's because everything from the old forums was transferred to "general."
And as to why we don't differentiate by scales, we're still convinced (and our research shows pretty definitively) that a lot of guys have multiple interests - and we think that we can all learn from each other, regardless of our scale(s) of choice.
Thanks for reading MR,
Terry

[BentnoseWillie]

QUOTE: the BEST MRR forum on the web does do this (which is the Atlas forum, in case you didn't know).

Todd Clark might suggest otherwise [:p]

[BentnoseWillie]

QUOTE: the BEST MRR forum on the web does do this (which is the Atlas forum, in case you didn't know).

Todd Clark might suggest otherwise [:p]

[Paul3]

B-dubya wrote:

QUOTE: Todd Clark might suggest otherwise

Puh-lease. [:)] I surf that site from time to time, and it is so annoying to click on link after link after link to read a whole thread.

Now, If ol' Todd were to show all the posts with one click, then it might be worth something. [:p]

Oh, and if I didn't have to pay for it, I might acutally post there, too. Why anybody wants to pay for RR forums when there are so many free ones around is beyond me. Why are you there, BW? Just curious...

Paul A. Cutler III
*****************
Weather Or No Go New Haven
*****************

[Paul3]

B-dubya wrote:

QUOTE: Todd Clark might suggest otherwise

Puh-lease. [:)] I surf that site from time to time, and it is so annoying to click on link after link after link to read a whole thread.

Now, If ol' Todd were to show all the posts with one click, then it might be worth something. [:p]

Oh, and if I didn't have to pay for it, I might acutally post there, too. Why anybody wants to pay for RR forums when there are so many free ones around is beyond me. Why are you there, BW? Just curious...

Paul A. Cutler III
*****************
Weather Or No Go New Haven
*****************

[Anonymous]

Not anticipating needs and fragmenting too early is likely a wise decision on MRR's part, especially since that would likely result in many small, low-content forums. However, I must agree that it is difficult to isolate areas of interest in a large forum. I would suggest some means whereby intelligent searches can be executed to hone in on areas within this large forum, i.e. DCC.
I suggest this because when I attempted to search on DCC, I received: Microsoft VBScript compilation error '800a0401'

Expected end of statement

/community/forum/search.asp, line 1245

DoLastPostLink = "<a href=""topic.asp?" & ArchiveLink & PageLink & "TOPIC_ID=" & Topic_ID & AnchorLink & Topic_LastPostReplyID & "#" & Topic_LastPostReplyID & "">" & getCurrentIcon(strIconLastpost,"Jump to Last Post","align=""absmiddle""") & "</a>"
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------^

[Anonymous]

Not anticipating needs and fragmenting too early is likely a wise decision on MRR's part, especially since that would likely result in many small, low-content forums. However, I must agree that it is difficult to isolate areas of interest in a large forum. I would suggest some means whereby intelligent searches can be executed to hone in on areas within this large forum, i.e. DCC.
I suggest this because when I attempted to search on DCC, I received: Microsoft VBScript compilation error '800a0401'

Expected end of statement

/community/forum/search.asp, line 1245

DoLastPostLink = "<a href=""topic.asp?" & ArchiveLink & PageLink & "TOPIC_ID=" & Topic_ID & AnchorLink & Topic_LastPostReplyID & "#" & Topic_LastPostReplyID & "">" & getCurrentIcon(strIconLastpost,"Jump to Last Post","align=""absmiddle""") & "</a>"
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------^

[Anonymous]

QUOTE: Originally posted by mayonardo
Microsoft VBScript compilation error '800a0401'

/community/forum/search.asp, line 1245

Hmm...I bet the problem is on line 1245. [;)]

It'll be fixed on Monday.

[Anonymous]

QUOTE: Originally posted by mayonardo
Microsoft VBScript compilation error '800a0401'

/community/forum/search.asp, line 1245

Hmm...I bet the problem is on line 1245. [;)]

It'll be fixed on Monday.

[Anonymous]

I WI***HERE WAS MORE INFO ON RCC AS IVE BEEN TOLD ITS A MUCH BETTER SYS THEN DCC WITH DCC ALL OF YOUR SIGNAL MUST PASS THROUGH THE TRACK. WITH RCC JUST THE AIR ,NOW I HAVE FLOWN RC JETS WITH BASICLY THE SAME SYS SEND REPLY TO RIPPER21 OR [e-mail]

[Anonymous]

I WI***HERE WAS MORE INFO ON RCC AS IVE BEEN TOLD ITS A MUCH BETTER SYS THEN DCC WITH DCC ALL OF YOUR SIGNAL MUST PASS THROUGH THE TRACK. WITH RCC JUST THE AIR ,NOW I HAVE FLOWN RC JETS WITH BASICLY THE SAME SYS SEND REPLY TO RIPPER21 OR [e-mail]