I don't know about "old", but I've been in this hobby since birth. This is what happens when a) your father is a model railroader and b) your grandfather made wooden toy trains for his only grandson.
I'm 29 these days, but I've been a regular member of my club for 11 years, and for the first 5 (plus the 3 years I was a junior member), we still had our ca. 1953 block control layout to operate on. Since then, we have moved into a new 50' x 200' building and have gone to DCC.
Initially, I was against it. I liked what we had, and I was very leery of the possibility of obsolete decoders and controllers, etc. My concerns were addressed by the fact that DCC is based on an NMRA Standard, and that would make wholesale abandonment of the format (meaning that you'd have to replace all the decoders, etc.) unlikely. And if worse came to worse and the company of our choice did go under, there would be at least 3 or more other DCC manufacturers to fall back on, which at worst would require buying a new "brain" and controllers but would leave the loco installations intact.
The cost was also a concern. Our club had over 1000 engines registered among the membership, and conversion cost would have to be picked up by the individual members. Fortunately, this would be a option, rather than a requirement, but still the cost was daunting.
But then the Electrical Committee started to add up what it would cost to build all new block control cabs (the average cab at our old layout was 50 blocks) for a large new layout. At $6 a toggle it started to add up quickly. Add into that the long stretches of wire from the cabs to the blocks, and that ate into the bank account by quite a bit, too. In short, DCC wasn't all that different in price to the club itself, while the members had the option of buying decoders or not.
Finally, the next concern was operating safety. In block control, trains are automatically protected from head-ons by the differing polarity in the rails. With DCC, head-ons are a distinct possibility. To address that, we decided to install a signal system, and later have learned that with bi-directional communication, trains that pass a red signal can be stopped automatically.
Then, we started to get into the attributes of DCC.
It allows a yardmaster to park engines anywhere there is room, not just where the block breaks are.
It allows helpers to be independantly controlled, and they can be added or removed on the fly.
It allows locos of completely different running speeds to be run together.
It allows for realistic lighting effects for headlights, etc.
It allows for total flexibility for yard work, letting mulitple crews work around each other without having to worry about who has what block.
And, it makes the refrain of "Who's got my train!?!?" rarely heard at the club these days, unlike back then. [:D]
All in all, I like DCC so much that I bought the Digitrax Zephyr system for my home layout. In about a week, I'll be adding radio throttles. I would not go back to DC, except for really simple "one man" operations.
Paul A. Cutler III
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Weather Or No Go New Haven
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