Quote: I didn't know I needed to clean the track, so I never did. Never lubricated the engine, either. Used Lincoln logs and dominoes to make my grades. Took it out whenever I want to run it,snapped the track together and it ran, first time, every time. I Finally lost track of my train when I graduated and joined the Army, after I brought it back to the States, reversed the transformer, and ran it for years on American 120v current. [/quote]
Not me, I want nothing to do with the crappy trains we used to have. Sectional track. Terrible. Electrical continuity problems, always coming apart. Horn hook couplers that look horrible. Cars with terrible detailing and truck mounted couplers. The old engines had terrible speed control and horrible electrical pick up, two wheels on each side if you were lucky.
[quote] Today I constantly read abut problems with keeping track clean, dead spots, shorts, lubricating, checking gauges and myriad other problems, and the issues involved with DCC, just the ones that make it into the magazines, are too numerous to count, not to mention that anything computerized is rapidly headed for obsolescence and in constant need of upgrading.
Basically dead spots, dirty track, lubricating, equipment, out of gauge track and cars are all issues that have always been there and if you let them happen it doesn't matter whether you are using DC or DCC its the same problem and your railroad will run horribly.
I've built layouts that operate more than two trains at the same time on DC and I will tell you DCC is WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY simpler than that. Basically on a simple layout the wiring for DCC is EXACTLY the same as it is for DC. What gets complicated about DCC is when people do things that are not even within the realm of possibility with DC or try to make it complicated.
The olden days of model railroading weren't all that great, I have no interest in going back to them.