Anybody tried DCC and went back to DC?

Procter must have just awakened from a long sleep, as he has been away from the board for a while. But I see that he is being his usual troll self again, playing semantic games and trying to goad people into an argument. I am just going to ignore him since he is not actually adding anything to the body of significant knowledge, or contributing any useful information to the thread. He is merely amusing himself reading the rebuttals to his silly pronouncements.

Obnoxious Pratt

It doesn't sound like you do.

Well, we are all "playing", are we not?

Perhaps, but we run our trains as there is, in many cases, no such thing as a "signalman". If we do have signalling systems, then it CTC and it's ilk and that's controlled by a dispatcher who (usually) controls 120 plus miles of track. Even without signalling, he'll still control 120 plus miles of track.

It does. As do all North American railways other than transit systems.

So can I when I operate alone.

It's not a "restriction", it's how we chose to operate our trains, everyone of them controlled by a human. No automation, no mindless roundy-go-roundy.

I/we don't look up tables, I/we look at the locomoitve and read the number from there. :-)

No, I run a railway that has a purpose and moves passengers and freight for a reason.

All my switches are hand operated, at the switch, interlocking, no signals, switch motors etc., etc..

Come on, don't be stupid.

Model.

No I'm not. I said that's what I did. I didn't mention anything else.

No more than DC has under exactly the same circumstances. "WHO HAS MY TRAIN?" Heard frequently with DC block control systems.

Geeze, I operate with time-table and train orders and use car-cards and waybills to generate freight. Obviously Greg, you don't have a clue what you are talking about otherwise you wouldn't be making a stupid statement such as that. I know more about prototype operation than you'd think, from two continents. I've worked for BR in the UK, as a 16 year old fireman and for a railway in Canada out of Montreal.

Now, lets hear about your railway experience.

-- Cheers

Roger T.

Home of the Great Eastern Railway

Of course Greg doesn't have a reasonable grasp of the subject . In previous exchanges he's displayed a profound ignorance of North American prototype operations. And when he's called on it he either acts the outraged innocent, or claims that railroads "couldn't possibly operate in such a fashion as described".

He has *none*. And yet he the effrontery to continually tell those who

They probably model a prototype that doesn't use model railroad-style "blocks". But then, with your encyclopaedic knowledge of operating practices from around the world, you should have realised that...

Where did you get this bullshit figure from? What are the decoders you allege have a maximum operating life of only five years?

More bullshit. I have 25 or so locos of my own fitted with decoders,

Even more bullshit. My average time setting up CVs would be about 10 minuted per loco, if that. I've *NEVER* posted a query about DCC to a newsgroup.

Still more bullshit! The loco address is on the loco - it's the loco number.

Greg, I can understand that DCC is not for you. What I can't understand is why you tell lies about it to discredit those who do use it.

It's my own personal layout - I operate it, usually alone, sometimes with a group.

At the club

No blocks? Don't you like prototype operation?

All this is with DCC and the only 'buttons' that we

You throw switches, I throw switches. You have to memorize loco numbers and push specific buttons, I have to throw specific switches. Most of my block switching is automatic and progressive.

No - at present no-one has been able to tell me how to automatically switch off sound for tunnels and hidden sections. I'll get to it. I do have a baseboard mounted loco depot sound unit.

Yeah yeah, playing drivers is a different hobby to modelling and operating a railway.

We're accusing each other of the same thing. ;-) You're playing engine driver in isolation - I'm playing railway operation.

I don't believe the set-up time is greatly different between the two systems.

- I cut the rail and wire in a $1 toggle switch, or equivalent. (in my case a 78p relay)

- you spend hundreds/thousands of dollars on DCC control systems and decoders with a maximum of 5 year life before replacement, and then spend many hours milling chassis and soldering in decoders, more hours setting up CVs and posting queries to news groups asking why ...

- I click on the section of track on the diagram I want switched off.

- you look up stock tables to find loco addresses, input numerous numbers and settings and memorise totally non-prototypical strings of commands to cause your locos to co-operate with one another and a hand controller.

- I click a single switch to link block and controller to run the train.

Unless your track and turnouts move along with the train, why would you need a mobile control position for them? ;-)

Regards, Greg.P.

Any layout where the total extent of operation is mindlessly running trains along a track is, IMHO, just "slotcar operation".

I've tried DCC - it doesn't add as much as it takes away from my style of operation, plus it costs far too much for an established hobbyist and loco collection.

Regards, Greg.P.

I post such bullshit as a reaction to your (collective as well as individual) bullshit. You keep coming up with this "DCC is the ultimate" crap. It's one form of control that has a lot of advantages and some major shortcomings. DCC isn't the only way to achieve many of the functions available at the outputs of loco decoders, but unfortunately most electronics producers have jumped on the DCC bandwagon and totally ignored the other possibilities.

Block control is normal on most railways of the world.

How

The USa is just one country in the world. You are circa 5% of the world's population and possibly 1% of the World's railways.

My point is and always has been that DCC is a very limiting answer to multiple model train control. It appeals to beginners. Once you settle on that system you limit the potential of model railways.

Regards, Greg.P.

If there's anyone I enjoy being ignored by, it's you! Please try harder - better still, why don't you blank my posts?

Regards, Greg.P.

My being perfect is in _your_ mind, not mine! ;-)

Actually, I'm not entirely sure in what way you see a contradiction.

Regards, Greg.P.

I think I have a reasonable grasp of the subject, after all I've read most that's been written about the subject over the last 60 years.

My crew are not

So driving trains is not playing driver???

You

You're saying that running one train is not playing driver but running multiple trains is???

I would consider it "playing signalman".

Sure, that's a reasonable way to play, assuming that's what your prototype did or does.

So you can't play "dispatcher" or "yardmaster" etc if you operate alone. I can.

Our trains interchange with each other and we need to

Great, _but_ your operation is entirely dependant upon your having sufficient individual locomotive operators to run each individual train. That's a very definite restriction of either your system or DCC.

You need (as would I) the locomotive number to be able to do that. Hence my comment of look-up tables.

BTW,

I have a collection of locos from the 1970s through to 2006, as do most modellers who have been in the hobby that long. Many are modified etc so I'm not going to bin the lot, even if the prototypes I want were available off the shelf.

You drive trains - I run a railway. (model :-)

So localized turnout control would do the job perfectly!?!

Sounds like you don't know your railroad's operating system!

Big central control panels went out with

Model or prototype???

even when I used straight DC I had walk around panels. I've

You're suggesting the UK doesn't have centralized traffic control???

So we do agree that DCC has limitations better served by block control.

I think we've both just realised that you don't do that!

Regards, Greg.P.

So are you guys ever going to determine if Certs is a candy mint or if Certs is a breath mint?

in article snipped-for-privacy@i42g2000cwa.googlegroups.com, video guy -

Certs is a birth control pill. The woman holds it between her knees.

Bullshit. You *STILL* can't grasp the fundaments of North American operation. You've demonstrated that over and over again. I suspect your understanding of German operations isn't that flash, either.

You're displaying your ignorance again. A dispatcher and a signalman are two entirely separate and unrelated roles.

Really? Why not? How is it then that prototype modellers around the world use DCC to replicate a variety of safeworking/rules/operating systems? Could it be they know more than you?

I'll happily be rude - you're the one who "don't know much about US railway operation overall". What part of Roger's statement do you dispute? Be prepared to back up your reply with facts...

So? Get some reading glasses!

You poor blind bastard - your inability to read little numbers from further away from 18" is a limtation of your eyesight, not DCC!

Just how thick are you? That's *why* Roger has provision for multiple operators, uses prototypical paperwork, crosses and interchanges trains

- he's replicating the actions of a railroad system!

Idiot. In all sorts of circumstances, on railroads all over the world, on main lines and branches, train crew set routes. They've done so since the dawn of railways. You're displaying your ignorance *yet* again.

Sigh. You're displaying your ignorance *yet* again.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Only a complete and utter drongo would believe that...

You cop a flogging because you're a liar who deliberately distorts and misrepresents the facts to support your position, and then post futher distortions when you get called on it, nothing more.

I'm suggesting that the cost of DCC is a subjective figure. You knew that.

Discussing anything with Greg is impossible.

No matter what one writes, he puts his twist onto it.

Greg is the all knowing God of model railroading.

He claims to know all yet knows nothing, as his replies indicate.

As will all Gods, there's only one way to treat them.

PLONK!

-- Cheers

Roger T.

Home of the Great Eastern Railway

On Thu, 24 Aug 2006 09:15:45 -0700, "Greg.P." wrote:

Mark is not the one posting bullshit, you are. Not only that, but everyone reading this group has become keenly aware of that.

That's because the "other possibilities"- namely direct current- controlling the tracks under the trains instead of the actual trains- has reached its limit of practical development. One can do many things with DC to mimic some of the features of DCC, but at great cost in time, money and engineering input. There is no point in doing that when one can get all that DC offers and more right out of the box with a top-shelf DCC system. Reading the tripe you write one gets the idea that you believe that your old manual typewriter can do everything a modern, computerized word processing program can do. That is rubbish, and so are your anti-DCC rantings. Listening to you prattle about prototypical working is a joke. Either you do not have a clue, or you are pretending not to have one. In either case, you are coming across like an absolutely clueless individual. There are several of us subscribing to this group who are, or have been, professional railroaders, myself among them. We have told you that you don't know what you are talking about, and you respond that, yes you do, it is us that are incorrect and clueless. When I read your post stating that; while you do not actually have any real working on the railroad experience, you have read a lot about it and know several people who do, or who have worked on the railroad, I almost sprayed a mouthful of Coca-Cola out onto the keyboard and video screen. Did you mean that as a joke, or were you actually serious?

Do you think that those of us who earn a living working on the railroad live in a vacuum? Do you think we can spend decades working as groundsmen, engine drivers, signalmen, trainmasters, yardmasters, leading engine drivers, dispatchers and so on, and not know all about how a real railway operates? Do you think that those of the aforementioned group who are interested enough to be model railroaders have not accrued additional railway knowledge through reading, study, and observation to go along with their own first-hand experience? Do you think that I am incapable of operating my model railway with DCC in exactly the same fashion that my chosen prototype did? If you do, then you are an arrogant ass to be sure.

Your intransigence and your abyssal lack of knowledge about railway operation is amusing. Almost as amusing as your pathetic attempts to discredit DCC and all those who use it. You said that I should killfile you. Ah, but I won't do that, because you amuse me and I am one of the few who genuinely irritate you. You are sorely lacking in knowledge about railway operations in the real world, and even more sorely lacking in knowledge regarding prototypical operation of model railways. You have, so far, got yourself PLONKED by two subscribers to this group by virtue of your ignorant rantings. I will not be number three. I rather enjoy seeing you get your ass roasted by the likes of Roger and Mark. I am sorry that Roger killfiled you as it was amusing to read him rake you over the coals. I shall miss that. If you knew what you were talking about it would be different, but you pontificate from a point of utter ignorance, so you deserve to get raked over the coals.

Regards, Obnoxious Pratt