Re: DCC questions

Thanks for all that, its been very helpful. I must say the more and more I study DCC, the more I want to give it a go. The only thing which is still worrying me is how difficult it would be to chip the older locos which arnt DCC ready. Of course, that could be an excuse for buying some new stock!

Older locos can actually be easier to chip, as long as your are confident with a soldering iron. I have several older Hornby locos with the open X03 type motor, these are quite easy to chip, just need to make sure that the spring wire holding the brushes against the motor are fully insulated.

Hornby ringfield and the Lima pancake motors are also quite easy, just have to make sure the motor brushes are insulated.

The only locos that might be difficult are my Mainline 2251 class GWR 0-6-0 and early Bachmann locos where teh motor is incased inside the chassis block.

Don't worry. Just do. I've never had a case where the hard part was the wiring, the hard part has always been finding a good space for the decoder to hide.

And... as to "one loco" DCC layouts... let me take a moment to praise DCC in kid's layouts. If you expect to have a young hand at the throttle, there is a great benefit to being able to set the top speed resulting from 100% throttle. And also, it is much more intuitive explaining direction in terms of Thomas' boiler head instead of some obscure "this switch sets the direction of the track" nonesense.

-dave