Question on several trains on one layout

That won't make up for the sorry excuses for documentation that they stick in and "sorry, sucker, you're on your own."

Example:

Yesterday I bought a new digital camera, a Fuji, and find the documentation deals with the camera, which is good, but says nothing about the sorry excuse for software they send. Like "How do I get the damn thing to down load the pictures, or, where in hell in the 150000 files in my computer did it hide them?" It's not unusual, one of the most popular 3D programs for manipulating humanoids, Poser, has probably the worst manual, even though it's several hundred pages, that I've ever seen. It's less than worthless, the writer had no familiarity with either computer or 3D terminology. My guess is he works cheap.

Why would the doc for a DCC be any better? Geeks wrote them both.

(When they get a USER to write the instructions, they might be easier to work with, Tech writers care more about the nitty gritty of the circuitry than they do about being able to use it.)

((Excuse me while I send Fuji an email asking how to get the damn thing to download, before I get frustrated and see how far I can throw it.))

Greybeard

I have not observed the improvement in track cleaning you claim between DCC and DC. I do not need to clean track every 20 minutes on my DC layout, in its unlined room, with storage loops under the house, dirt floor. If you want slow speed DC control, use a pulse width modulated controller with back EMF, as good as the best DCC back EMF decoders.

snip

DCC only looks better if you do not intend to properly signal your layout. If you run trains to signals, DCC has minimal advantages.

Yep. That's why there's a Digitrax users group on Yahoo...with thousands of subscribers, there's someone there to help everybody.

CL

P.S. I bet there's a group for NCE, Wangrow, Lenz, Atlas, etc., ad infinitum.

On Wed, 2 Mar 2005 21:16:20 UTC, "Edward A. Oates" wrote: 2000

Hey, I was one of the engineers that said that :-). Even to me the Digitrax manuals are opaque.

The only way you get my DCC away from me (until something better comes along) is to pry it from my cold dead fingers.

Err...read the /whole/ sentence.

Here, I'll repeat it for you:

Does that make more sense? Where does it say one doesn't need passing sidings at all?

On Wed, 2 Mar 2005 03:01:06 UTC, "Pac Man" wrote: 2000

Well I got the EE. Could I design a DC system that would do just what I want. Maybe. Would I be willing to build it, NO WAY, not when I can get DCC to do what I want with very little trouble.

I really don't care which way someone wants to go. It is their choice. Mine was made long ago. DCC. It allows mainline trains, yard switching and local switching concurrently with trains moving from one domain to another seamlessly as long as they follow the basic rule that no two trains can occupy the same space at the same time and people throw turnouts behind their trains. The real awakening came the first night we operated after converting our large blocked DC layout to DCC. Two trains met and passed without either one stopping. We just needed people operating the turnouts at each end of the passing siding.

More rubbish. The huge advantage is in the simiplicity of implementation and maintenance. You amateur electrical engineers never seem to understand that most of us do not share your electrical enthusiasm, and regard having to do most of those things that DC requires as onerous tasks.

I am going to operate on a model railroad this Friday that doesn't have passing sidings. It's DCC, and some people think it's fun to operate.

Captain Handbrake St. Louis, GA.

Define "properly signal".

Only in your opinion.

I have the EE too and designed/built hard logic boards to handle reversing, automatic staging and a second RR line to interfere with the main. I tore it all out and installed CTI for the logic and new signals and Digitrax for train control and haven't looked back. YMMV

Oh, look! Another apples/celery comparison. Your camera has crap documentation, therefore so must DCC?

Whatever happened to lowering the "level of allowable ignorance" - whatever that means - and figuring things out for yourself????

Nobody, with the possible exception of Terry Flynn (grin), denies that DCC is a boon in that kind of environment.

But they never specify that there might be environments in which it gives no, or little, advantage.

Can't we just all agree that both environments exist and drop this religious brouhaha?

On Wed, 2 Mar 2005 20:50:23 -0800, Larry Blanchard wrote:

We could if Flynn would stop dumping rubbish into the newsgroup. There is no way that ONE modus operandi is going to suit every person's taste and need. Greg Procter was adamant that the DCC crowd desist from claiming that DCC was the only way. I don't think we ever actually did that, per-se, although someone may have uttered it in a fit of partisan enthusiasm. Well, we seem to have all agreed that Greg had a point, that DCC really is not the only way, now we need to get Flynn to quit cabbaging on every DCC posting and touting DC as a superior alternative for all applications. It is most certainly not. It is a great way to do things for those who do not want DCC for what ever reason, for those who simply cannot afford DCC, and for those amateur electrical engineers who use the model railroad to flog off all their gizmos, gimcracks and whazzits on. But there is positively no way in hell that the average model railroad guy can engineer a DC system that will equal, much less out perform, a top shelf DCC system. I think we have seen here that most people are very happy to give up the pain in the arse of engineering a DC system to run the railroad in favor of a much simpler and better operating DCC system. There simply must be a reason for that which goes beyond the "allowable level of ignorance". It may be that for most of us, our hobby is model railroading, not electrical engineering. That even seems to include the professional electrical engineers among us.

CH

What exactly does that cryptic phrase mean, do you think?

You're at it again! ;-)

You're really at it again!! ;-)

People like to be dumbed down?

I thought that we had pretty well concluded that US railways don't have signals, just trains following each other at set time intervals? By the time one adds signal blocks with detectors one might as well add track blocks and save all those dollars that DCC costs.

Greg.P.

Report back to us if you manage to stay awake the whole operating session!

Gee, that sounds like one of our N-Trak layouts we display at the train shows.

Just run several trains on each loop round and round - all day long. And we use both DCC and CD (on different loops). Boring to run but public loves all the moving trains!

We contemplated switching during shows (as we have the capabilities) but we quickly decided that the show going public would quickly get bored with some slow switchin moves. We goota keep the trains moving at all times.

Japanese Bullet trains and Tomas the Tank Engine are the bigges hits!

:-) Peteski