Re: DCC Controller Features

When you model 1920-30, 1950 on is modern! ;-) Railways have been around since the 1820s - 1950 is 130 years modern!

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I'd like to put DCC in one of my locos, but I'd also need the DCC control and power supply to go with it. When that's $20, sign me up! :-)

Tim

Heavy duty surplus wall wart, surplus transistors, switches, pots, I'd have a hard time spending much more than that.

And as someone else has already stated, a DCC loco without the rest of it is a non powered static model. Adding DCC to the second loco might cost less than twenty bucks, but watch out for number one.

(Hint, transistors that can handle even two amps are a lot cheaper than high wattage pots, and also allow adding a 555 timer as a one shot to give an eighteen volt "crud buster" in a one millisecond pulse. Great for those times that you advance the throtte and the train ignores it.)

Greybeard

Then, of course, there's the required knowledge to put it all together.

Yes, five years of college prepared me to see more than a bag of bits and baubles, but I reckon 90% of model railroaders wouldn't know what to do with a transistor, much less a 555.

Even I know that letting somebody else do the development work is cheaper in the long run, I just read the manual, plug the wires in, and run trains. Surely the savings in time is worth something.

None realy if you're just talking about hardware moving about a layout. I'm not saying one is better than the other. However I have stated my preference.

Nonetheless, as far as the user experience, the two are different and the difference is not trivial.

Jb

Bull puckey! You going to throw switches every 2'. ? That sounds much more fun that using DCC and just driving the trains. [sarcasm] And I can do that all around my layout. Weather that's prototype practice or not, I can do it. What a pain it would be to toggle up every 2' of a layout.

Here's another example, two short trains waiting in the same siding for a longer one to go past. Prototypical? Perhaps or not, who cares, if I want to do it then that's reason enough.

Why does the prototype do it? Jeesh, go someplace where they have more than

1 locomotive and see what real railroads do. That's one of the reasons I went DCC. When I was using DC I wired up my roundhouse to accept any locomotive in any location. Talk about a pain in the tender. Your logic was similar to a guy I met in a hobby shop. I said it would be nice if my SW7 ran at the same speed as my SD40-2 so I could lash them together. He said why? the prototype doesn't do it. Well that was a stupid response to begin with and in the end he was incorrect anyway. I see SD45s+SW1200RSs lashed up in the local yard as standard practice. The guy also said slow speed operation wasn't important anyway because trains got up to speed pretty quickly. Just trying to make excuses to fit his views.

??? how many buffouts have you been gobbling ??? Your statement makes no sense! Going to a higher technology and getting closer to free operation is dumming down the hobby? How is freeing yourself from the constraints and hassle of under layout wiring dumb down the hobby? Gives people more time to build or operate as opposed to futzing around with a mess of wires under the layout.Obviously you realy like the wiring stuff, so enjoy it. But don't insult others because they don't share your fantacies. You come across as a boorish snob who's either too afraid or cheap to come out of the dark ages. :-) Course I could be wrong, but that's the impression I get. :-) Personally I don't care if people like to use DC systems. But to say DCC is a step backwards, well, that's just....

Good enough. Ideal for DCC - yeah, Ideal for DC - yeah. I never said DC was no good*. You are the one who says DCC is no good. And I always agreed that DCC was more expensive but not prohibatively so. I am willing to stash away some money for DCC. Jb

*I did say howerver that I much prefer DCC operation.

There is very little knowledge actually required and that which is required is worth learning if you're going to build a model railway.

Read the manual.

No - the switch will be normally closed (turned on). The only time it is used is when you need to kill a loco.

You seem to have a mental picture of me throwing hundreds of switches in sequence to get a train to run a circuit of my layout! Reality is that I throw a switch to move a loco out of the departure track, another to link the required controller to that track. From there on turnout positions and signals maintain the link. There are about 2 dozen switches on a medium size layout for turning off specific loco sections, but note that these are only altered for specific MUing occassions and probably wouldn't be present on the average layout. In your case, you need to find a loco's DCC address and key it into your controller - that seems a more onerous task to me!

What a pain it would be to install decoders in every loco!

If it helps, I have three through platform roads in my main station, two of which have length for two trains, plus a scissors crossover at the center. Some trains run through, while others (suburban) have a loco attached at the rear and reverse. On arrival, after uncoupling, the train loco is isolated with a toggle switch - they always stop at the same position - the new train loco backs onto the rear - the signal clears (dispatcher's job) and the train departs. Return the toggle to on - link to hostler's controller - train runs to loco depot. Throwing that one toggle isn't such an onerous job.

The prototype couples locos together on the wait/depart track of the loco depot? Why??? I have to admit I model a European prototype where they don't have automatic couplers, so I know they don't couple the locos together there.

Why/how was it a pain?

I'm the king of low speed operation - the very first reason I rejected DCC was because the slow speed operation was poor compared to my DC operation. I tend to agree with you in regard to your hobby shop guy's advice and the idea of loco speeds matching for a given controller setting is enticing. However, I'm reminded of NZR operation where different locos have differing balancing speeds - that's the point on the speed/traction curve where the best performance is obtained. A Da (GM G12 A1A'A1A') has a balancing speed which is half that of a Dx class (Co'Co') If you MU them on a hilly route, the tractive effort of the pair can be _less_ than that of the Dx alone at certain speeds, because the Da drags the Dx down into the zone where current draw has to be severely restricted.

It can be.

Prototypical operation becomes more complex with DCC - you add ever more modules to get your trains to obey signal systems or you limit yourself to the number of operators you can dredge up.

The wires have to be there anyway.

I'm responding largely because I've been insulted - mostly I try to remain informative and constructive but I'll admit I sometimes respond in kind.

LOL. Locally I'm known as one of the experts and proponants of DCC.

It can be reality.

I'm glad that DCC works for you - it doesn't work for me.

THis was all available in print some twenty years ago when I first got hooked on trains. it's nothing new, and the diagrams should still be available somewhere, although I no longer have them.

It is the time spent in making the project work, and the satisfaction from it that makes it worth while. 25 years of being an amateur radio operator ended when I could no longer get the components I needed to even build a simple pi net antenna match. Playing with the stuff, making it work, that's 80% of the fun.

I won't try to kid anyone, right now my layout consists of two, 1 X 2 foot scene modules, but I'm at the point that I have to start thinking about trackwork and bench work before I make any more. Won't be the first one, but the fact I'm building another tells you how satisfied I was of the old one.

Greybeard.

Well, As long as we're both having fun running our trains I guess we're both happy. At maintenance yards here in Canada they often couple many locomotives together. Here is a pic of the Edmonton CN main yard where a good number of locomotives are all strung together.

Jb

Are you sure they are coupled together? It would seem more likely to me that they are just parked closely.

OK, that's my point. It's not readily available today, especially for a beginner.

Again, just like Gregory, that works for you. I am not an electronics hobbyist; rather, I am a model railroader. I would rather operate trains than build the infrastructure necessary to control them.

Just look at your local Radio Shack...remember when you could get parts there?

They look coupled to me...it's not uncommon for railroads in North America to move excess power from one terminal to another, joining as many as 12 locomotives together (though there are rules about how many powered axles may be operated at one time. I believe CSX is limited to 24 or 30 powered axles in a locomotive consist.

But only because you've chosen not to use it, which is your perogative.

You could do the same thing you do using DCC. But you choose not to do so, which is fine.

It's not a technological limitation of DCC that prevents it - it's your personal choice.

Mike Tennent "IronPenguin" MRR Electronics Special Effects Lighting

It's possible that it might still be available, Kalmbach was the publisher of most of it IIRC.

In my radio days, we called them appliance operators. Those that had no interest in understanding how it worked, they just wanted to yak with the best that money could buy. But without that understanding, when something didn't work, they were down until the technician could get the time to repair their units. The rest of us just got out the VTVM and started troubleshooting.

Radio Shack was, even in 1963, known as the dregs of electronics, the junk that was really unworthy of using. Others, Allied, Lafayette, Olson, had varied reputations, with Allied being one of the best, and the only survivor still furnishing good qualilty parts. DigiKey is sorta a "Johnny come lately", but furnishes good quality components at very reasonable prices. There are many books available that should, in a very short time give anyone enough knowledge to be able to use them effectively, but you want to be careful, you might learn something.

Greybeard

Now we're getting somewhere ;-)

The hobby is multi-faceted, and beyond buying trains and track and snapping them together, just about every facet is optional. You can try them out yourself, buy them or buy avoidance of them. I don't mind if anyone doesn't want to try everything - just keep buying trains so that the sales volumes stay up and the prices stay down :-)

What does irritate me, and the bit that gets me posting, is when people claim that ignoring whole facets of the hobby is the only way to go - that's dumbing down the hobby!

Regards, Greg.P.