11-09-2010, 04:21 PM
Every time I see a post on another forum saying never to use address 00 to run a DC loco, it's only a gimmick, etc. - it turns out the person saying that happens to use one of the system that does not support that feature. Curious, huh? I often throw a new loco ont he track and dial up 00 to see if it works. I've never fried any, or melted a shell on one. It works better on some locos than others, and is not somethign I'd tend to do as a regular means of operating, but HO decoders are not expensive and in anything of fairly recent vintage, easy to install so there really isn't a need. I don;t have any locos with coreless can motors, putting those on DCC track without a decoder pretty much will destroy them, quickly. So did early DCC decoders that did not use high frquency drive. This has been known from the early days though, this isn't new information.
Part of the overkill is people being gadget hounds. I orignally had the idea of breakign my layout into sections, with a power toggle and an LED indicator to tell that power was on for that section, and another indicator for a short, on some sort of master "power board". Luckily I came to my senses before I constructed such useless garbage and wasted my money. Even our whole 14x120 modular setup is only broken into sections because the distances invovled made it more economical to add an additional booster rather then run the bus wires that far. Some people even break their layouts into dozens of train-length 'blocks' with individual short protection - I find this to be much overkill and complications to the wiring that simply aren't needed for smooth operation. If you have to watch your trains like a hawk because any second they might derail, you have problems that go far beyond which control system you use. And if your operators pay attention to where they are going and don't run switches lined against them, you've eliminated the number 1 cause of shorts on the layout. I beleive I've committed overkill myself by breaking my layout into 4 sections: 2 mainlain halves, staging, and yard, but since I already had the hardware I figured I should use it. I don;t think this was really needed at all, especially after I changed plans and the staging is now just 2 tracks. But it's already in place and wired, I'm not rippign out wiring now.
--Randy
Part of the overkill is people being gadget hounds. I orignally had the idea of breakign my layout into sections, with a power toggle and an LED indicator to tell that power was on for that section, and another indicator for a short, on some sort of master "power board". Luckily I came to my senses before I constructed such useless garbage and wasted my money. Even our whole 14x120 modular setup is only broken into sections because the distances invovled made it more economical to add an additional booster rather then run the bus wires that far. Some people even break their layouts into dozens of train-length 'blocks' with individual short protection - I find this to be much overkill and complications to the wiring that simply aren't needed for smooth operation. If you have to watch your trains like a hawk because any second they might derail, you have problems that go far beyond which control system you use. And if your operators pay attention to where they are going and don't run switches lined against them, you've eliminated the number 1 cause of shorts on the layout. I beleive I've committed overkill myself by breaking my layout into 4 sections: 2 mainlain halves, staging, and yard, but since I already had the hardware I figured I should use it. I don;t think this was really needed at all, especially after I changed plans and the staging is now just 2 tracks. But it's already in place and wired, I'm not rippign out wiring now.
--Randy
Modeling the Reading Railroad of the 1950's in HO
Visit my web site to see layout progress and other information:
http://www.readingeastpenn.com
Visit my web site to see layout progress and other information:
http://www.readingeastpenn.com