hminky wrote: A small layout is impossible to operate multiple locomotives without DCC. Besides DC is dead, it is only looking for a place to fall down. The advantages of DCC and sound far outway the expense. Wiring for DC is a real pain. Harold
A small layout is impossible to operate multiple locomotives without DCC. Besides DC is dead, it is only looking for a place to fall down. The advantages of DCC and sound far outway the expense. Wiring for DC is a real pain.
Harold
Unless you are volunteering to ante up the $$$ to do with DCC what I'm already doing with DC, the good old system won't be dead until after I am. Wiring MAY be a bit more complex, but gives me the advantage of automatic control circuitry (two resistors and a diode equal auto slow/stop, without a decoder or a computer interface,) and, therefore, 'fire and forget' dispatching to hidden staging.
IMHO, DCC is great if you want to run a locomotive. I'm running a railroad.
Chuck (modeling Central Japan in September, 1964 - MZL, analog DC)
I wish I had DC experience that wasn't 45 years old...as in "ago", but I have come to appreciate the efforts of those who conceived of, engineered, and then marketed the DCC way of running trains. If I understand the block system and DC, I am happy that some folks wanted to move on.
Still, legions of early modelers ran what worked, and that means DC. That means that it required a form of teamwork, fellowship, organization, and planning that perhaps is missing amongst DCC operators? I don't mean that those who operate DCC are impoverished by a lack of friends or fellow operators, but the tenor of their meetings, the required focus, is perhaps not quite as rich... however the brain owner describes a rich encounter with other modelers, I suppose.
I effectively only have the one experience, and am satisfied with it. I feel an unease, though, because it is finicky, not intuitive when things get dicey or simply stop. I have had to learn experientially that my decoders do things that were not made plain to me in any instructions, many pages they have been, to which I subjected myself. I hate computer manuals, and have yet to read more than perhaps 300 words in any one of them. I cannot make that claim for my Digitrax system. But, the reality is that, 19 times out of 20, it requires only of me to power up the system, chose a loco or a pair, and then operate them without having to do anything more than manually line points here and there, an easy task in my operating pit. I can park a train on a siding, and and run another past it when both sections of track are powered by one set of feeders. I need no switches, no extra wiring...I can play hogger, not the guy in the interlocking tower.
Was it not Newton who said, "if I have done great things, it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants." We should remember what came before us with some not light humility.
(Newton didn't mean it the way we understand it, but it will serve my purpose.)
ghonz711 wrote:I would love to hear from some other people who have experienced either flawless DC operation or perhaps, detailed and 'action packed' DCC railroads that required flipping switches, and communicating with the rest of the group in such an, if not more, intense manor.
Our layout is DCC but all the turnouts are hand thrown. One can put a DC control system in to a CTC like setting leaving the engineers to chat as the trains traverse the layout.
Most of the large layouts I have operated on in recent years have been DCC. At BayRails I operated on a large DC layout using progressive cab control. While it worked very well, I quickly remembered why I like DCC so much.
We had to stop and think about the moves we wanted to make and be careful to not accidentally get two locomotives into the same power block. So we were often doing very unprototypical things like getting a long cut of cars from somewhere to use as a "handle" to pass off the couple of cars from my through train to the local switcher. With DCC, you never worry about such things. Just do what it makes sense to do and think like the prototype would think, without having to be reminded this is just some toy trains running on 12V.
The other thing I really like about DCC is the ability to individually tune each loco's performance using configuration variable (CV) settings. I can control the top speed, the startup voltage to the motor, the ramp up rate, specific acceleration and deceleration momentum, kick start for balky motors, ... and the list goes on. You just can't exercise that fine a level of individual loco performance tuning with straight DC.
About all you can do with straight DC is fiddle with the mechanism and gearing. I much prefer being able to fine-tune the loco performance with the shell on.
Joe Fugate Modeling the 1980s SP Siskiyou Line in southern Oregon
nfmisso wrote: The BIGGER the layout, the less advantage DCC has over DC. This is because there is space for blocks to seperate trains from each other.
Nigel, I completely disagree. Large layouts benefit from DCC at least as much as a small layout, maybe even more so. With large layouts come many operators and places on the layout where many engines will be working simultaneously (yards especially). You can realistically do things with DCC that are IMPOSSIBLE to do with DC, such as follow a leading train closely through a yard limit, or shuffle multiple lashups through an engine facility.
Last weekend, I had the opportunity to run on the maiden op session of a VERY large and well planned layout. Each diesel lashup (the layout's set in 1970 ) had sound, and we were all ringing, blowing, and lighting appropriately. In the main yard at one point, we were running two yard engines, two inbound trains, and one outbound lashup back to the barn. The activity was completely realistic, with trains everywhere. There's NO WAY that DC would have supported the action, unless you had 3 foot blocks, and "blockmen" flipping switches like mad trying to keep up with the action.
These days, DC is ralistically only appropriate for lone wolves or 4x8 layouts. Anyone who wants to run prototypically correct trains with multiple operators, on even medium sized layouts, needs to ask themselves why they'd even consider being hampered by the limitations of DC.
Ray Breyer
Modeling the NKP's Peoria Division, circa 1943
This has been said many many times before:
Yes I know I know... this has got to be the millionth thread on the subject over the past year, but I have some new questions to add to the pot.
Last weekend, I had the pleasure to attend two Model Railroad Open houses in my area, the York Railway Modelers Open House and the Delaware and Rutland Model Railroad Club's Open house. The YRM club layout is a beautifully detailed layout featuring the Canadian Pacific Railroad and the Canadian National Railroad in HO scale. When I walked into the room, I watched, and listened as a sound equipped CPR F-unit rumbled across a bridge pulling a string of varnish into Ingersoll on it's way to London. DCC right? Wrong! The layout was run on a seemingly flawless DC system with an additional Quantum Engineer added to one of the throttles. The trains operated extremely smoothly over the entire layout. I was shocked to see that all of this was possible with DC, for (in my current situation of non-dcc ready locomotives from IHC) much cheaper than it would be to purchase a DCC system and suitable decoders. I have done some surfing on the Internet and found that a Digitrax Zephyr System, along with ten decoders, and extra cab to be close to $1000 dollars Canadian. DC would be much cheaper, considering that all I really need is a few feet of wire and an extra throttle, and if I chose, the Quantum Engineer. I do have a BLI locomotive that I am enjoying currently by flipping the direction switch back and forth, but to be able to control all of the sound and light functions on the locomotive in DC is extremely new to me.
The Delaware and Rutland on the other hand was much the opposite. Although it too was a CN/CP Theme, it was set in current times and used DCC (not quite sure of the system though). The railroad seemed much less interesting, although not nearly as close to complete as the YRM layout, because it seemed almost too easy to get a train up and running, throwing turnouts from the handheld, chatting as your train was traversing the length of the railroad. I found that using DC, you had to have a more detailed understanding of the railroad, your train, and all of the other trains running at the same time. The sound of the locomotives was broken often by calls to other operators asking for track clearance and such (which actually had to be obtained, considering that opposite polarities in DC would short out the track). It seemed much more 'action packed.' Am I missing something? Because every thread I've read seems to have some extremely valid and direction shifting points to both systems.
I would love to hear from some other people who have experienced either flawless DC operation or perhaps, detailed and 'action packed' DCC railroads that required flipping switches, and communicating with the rest of the group in such an, if not more, intense manor.
Ghonz
- Matt