So what's wrong with electronics in model railways?

A comment from anothet thread "not helped by people who wish to play with electronics (as fun as that can be) more than they actually want top play with model trains." Does it help or hinder?
Does it make your brain hurt?
Is it just too complicated?
What's electronics?
...
Intelligent, reasoned responses only, please :-) Humour is acceptable!
On the other had, as Mrs Merton would say, let's have a heated debate!
MBQ

On 12/01/2012 20:31, snipped-for-privacy@hotmail.com wrote:
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It's hobby do what you most enjoy. If you enjoy electronics and model railways then you can indulge in both. Similar for other things that overlap model railways.
PS you must restrain yourself from feeding the troll it only degenerates into trading insults and what's that got to do with model railways.

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Well if you get the electrics right you can weld your lengths of track together just like they do in the 12" to the foot world nowadays :-)
Actually I think it's part of the fun - getting the 'lccies right

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The great thing about model railways is you can pursue any aspect of it that interests you - scenery, model engineering, superdetail, electronics.
I used to read avidly the magazines of the 60s and early 70s where people built layout control from Post Office uniselectors and Army Surplus relays ! Using diode networks to provide a route setting panel was the latest idea. I still have a 1973 RM with a program for goods train scheduling based on simulated traffic, even though I knew back then I would never be able to afford even the simplest mainframe computer.
One constant theme has been the problem of getting enough current to any point motors and a clean supply to trains !
However, the troll can just .... nuff said.
Nick

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When I was a kid, the old boy two doors down had an O gauge layout in a shed. I would go round to collect the picture cards from the tea packets as they had no children. If I was lucky, or brave/cheeky enough to ask, I would get to visit the railway, but he would then bore me with details of which WWII fighter's cockpit those switches came from... and it had no scenery! Just didn't seem like a model railway to me.
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I built a transistorised controller from a design in RM in the mid- late 70s. Who was the guy that used to write those articles?
All of the mags, these days, seem to steer away from anything too technical. When they have published, they eirther make a real meal of it or commit schoolboy errors.
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Maybe we dug our own holes by trying to use surplus equipment.
MBQ

On Fri, 13 Jan 2012 00:20:58 -0800 (PST), " snipped-for-privacy@hotmail.com"
Why let the computer have all the fun?
Although the kind of mechanical "computer" control that Jim Russell and Peter Denny had, allows one to operate a layout prototypically by simulating the next signalbox up the line so that it can accept or release trains to you.

On 12/1/12 21:31 , snipped-for-privacy@hotmail.com wrote:
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When I was 19, I was interested in automating my train set using the output from a PET (it was possible but too expensive).
Now, 33 years later and even more programming time behind me, there's no way I'll let a computerised system near my train set as I want to use it to relax which means not a computer in sight!
-- Rod

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Aye, much the same here. I wanted to do control systems when I went to Uni, I studied control systems, I got a job as a real-time control systems programmer, and now I am perfectly happy to use a twiddly dial to change the speed of my trains. I do like DCC though. Guy

Just zis Guy, you know? wrote:
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Ditto ... not had time to waste on frills ... the railway runs straight of a bench power supply. But being on 45mm, I WILL get a battery truck finished, then I don't even have to waste time making sure all the fishplates are connecting.

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Do what Dad's old mate Mike Chrisp did and make one that doesn't require eletrickery. I wish I had a pic, but Google only turns up pics of Mike himself (a man for whom the term "avuncular" was surely invented, and a brewer of fine ales in his day too). Guy

Just zis Guy, you know? wrote:
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Oh I do have a live steam engine ... but I need to make the track a little more secure before I can safely run that :( http://medw.co.uk/wiki/index.php?page=Projects