Re: DCC Controller Features

I studied the options pretty carefully, including buying DCC CU and decoders, before reaching my conclusion.

I could also do it by removing the motors from my locos and pushing them around the layout by hand, or by using trained mice and cotton halters to pull them around the layout.

It's a technological limitation, admittedly one that can be overcome by adding a further layer of expensive technology, but that appears to me to be self defeating.

Regards, Greg.P.

What specifically is the "technological limitation" that would keep you from operating with DCC in the manner you are operating now?

You keep claiming this, but you haven't presented any examples of what you mean.

Personally, I think you'd have to "dumb down" DCC to do it, but that's not what most folks would consider a "technological limitation."

Mike Tennent "IronPenguin"

Oh, thank God!

And likewise, someone who states that their way is the only way to enjoy the hobby... present company excluded, of course. :-)

Well, no. You need to be able to separate them in any of 15 or 20 different places...could be anywhere in the locomotive servicing area, on any one of several tracks.

That's a whole lot of blocks and toggles.

Oterwise, you spot the end locomotive, uncouple, shunt it, spot the next locomotive, uncouple, shunt it, spot the next locomotive, uncouple, shunt it, spot the next locomotive,uncouple, shunt it, spot the next locomotive,uncouple, shunt it, spot the next locomotive,uncouple, shunt it, spot the next locomotive,uncouple, shunt,...may not require brains, but it sure is boring - and unprototypical, at least in North American practice.

Meanwhile, I just uncouple them wherever, and drive away.

As you say, model railroading, or any other modeling, is multi faceted. I don't mind if someone doesn't want to follow me into the DC route, if they have the bucks for DCC, more power to them. However, on the road I am attempting to emulate, which is a logging company, DCC would be nothing but the biggest waste of money ever devised. THunder Lake did NOT allow any of the branch locos on the mainline, and the branch track wasn't heavy enough for the main line loco. There was only one loco on the mainline at any time, and each branch had it's own loco. I'm not sure how they handled the transfer of a string from the branch to main and vice versa, the information I have is pretty sketchy. (Which pretty much leaves me to devise any method I wish, and challenge anyone to prove me wrong.)

DC has it's advantages, (technically simple, cheap, easy to work with) and DCC has it's advantages, none, however that would attract me to DCC at this time. Dumbing down? More than likely, I have my doubt that there's even one out of a thousand railroaders that understand the works of their postage stamp sized board, meaning when something goes wrong, it's a dead layout until they can get the problem shipped to a tech and returned. The choice of DCC or DC is strictly personal, but also has the overtones, with DCC, of letting someone else do the thinking so you don't have to. The wish to avoid learning is what I object to.

To say that either way is "the only way" is like saying there's only one way to drill a hole. A perfect layout, if there ever was such a thing, (nope) would combine elements of everything, but would also require a Navy drill hall to house. (And then you'd hear the hated cry, "That's not how the prototype.....")

Greybeard

(Prototypes be damned, its my world, I'll do what I blood well please with it.)

Most railway safety operating systems center around keeping trains separated. Block systems in particular do this by means of operating trains by track. DCC specifically over-rides being able to operate by track. DCC can be made to operate trains by track, but that requires yet another expensive layer of technology to be added to DCC.

I've written the above a number of times now.

Another point which put me off DCC, was the need to recognise individual DCC addresses for specific locomotives. My prototype uses very small loco cabside numbers, so I have to get to within 6-12" inches to read the running number. That just doesn't work for me.

A few days ago I listed about 5 ways I have operated my layouts - I think I might have missed out the electronic and digital means which I have also tried.

Regards, Greg.P.

You have 15 or 20 arrival/departure tracks in your loco depot??? Gee, can I come and play???

Just how many locos are you trying to operate at once??? I'm possibly a bit cack-handed or something, but I stick to one at a time!

Doesn't that leave your layout randomly littered with unattended locos?

Regards, Greg.P.

Requires signals and relays/electronics just as you need to do it with DC. DC does not inherently provide block working nor does it automatically drive trains hands off without another layer of technology. Keith

Make friends in the hobby. Visit Garratt photos for the big steam lovers.

I've chosen not to use it because it doesn't work for me - that's entirely different to your interpretation.

The extra cost isn't justified for the "advantage" of losing a small number of toggle switches.

All that additional unseviceable technology is rather pointless when two layers are required to take me back to the starting point.

DC analogue drives the track block, not a specific loco. The block signals are intended for whatever train is in the block, not for a specific loco.

While I chose to automatically drive some trains, that is not what we are talking about.

Some may be closely parked, but a lot of them are coupled together. In this picture I'd say most are coupled. It also makes it easier to shunt around blocks of locos (usually dragged around by only one unit under power, the others idle, or off as most likely in this case)

Jb

Just struck me that this thread reminds me of Monty Python....

The statement : 'Are you sure they are coupled together? It would seem more likely to me that they are just parked closely.' is in line with... 'It's not dead, it's just resting'

DC = the dead parrot.

Slotcar racing & safety procedures = 'it's a norwegan blue, beautiful plumage' (ie totaly irrelevant to the argument)

The Cheeze shop skit also comes to mind with the cheeses being any kind of logic... the shop is totaly devoid of any, despite the propriator's promises otherwise. Another analogy is the ending except replace the gun with my killfile.

Of course the argument sketch would be totaly appropriate as well.

And Mr Gumby = ...... well, I'll let you figure that one out squire. or perhaps Black Adder's Baldric....

Well, I'm off to do something a little more productive, like creating drawings of CN's intermodal cars and CP Rail's Spine car.

Jb

It's nothing of the sort - it is simply concentrating on those aspects of the hobby that interest you most, or for which you have a particular talent. To me, your position is rather like saying Enrico Caruso dumbed down music by concentrating on opera.

I haven't gotten the impression that anyone who advocates concentrating on a particular facet of the hobby believes that their's is the only way to go. It's simply the way those individuals have chosen to go. I like to superdetail and weather my locos and rollingstock to match specific prototypes, something that gives me great satisfaction. And yet, I have happily spent hours running on other peoples layouts with generic out-of-the-box stock. I don't believe either way is inherently superior to the other, it simply reflects the choices and preferences of the individual.

Well, to state the obvious, you can't drag around a dozen dead locos with one operating one in DCC or DC, but then it's an awful lot easier to replicate in DC.

I have no hassle with anyone concentrating on a specific facet of the hobby, but to advocate a control system to beginners because it allows you to ignore prototype safety regulations irritates me.

If they are coupled together then there is an additional and pointless operation required before the individual locos can be moved - why couple them unless there is a purpose for that action?

Absolutely. Come on up any time. We'll show you how it's done on the big island.

One or two per train, times six or eight trains in operation at any given time..

At tonight's operating session, I had four locomotives under my control at one time, a single unit and a group of three. Each had to be delivered to a different spot to be ready for power swaps on arriving trains.

The locomotive servicing area at the layout tonight has three steam tracks and three diesel tracks, each with spots for three or four locomotives; also two coach tracks and a caboose track. At some point during the evening, there were locomotives arriving and departing from every one of those spots. I'm sure you can do the arithmetic.

And that doesn't even take into account the ten roundhouse stalls, the classification tracks, the Post Office and Railway Express tracks, the coal track, the ash track...

And willful ignorance of the proven untruth of your statement irritates me.

But that's your goal, isn't it?