New Room, New Layout

Model Railroader Electronics and DCC
1

In the process of adding onto our house, I have been blessed with a new basement room to “play trains” in. My old HO layout is 100 ft or so of DC blocks. This new layout will be much bigger and frankIy, DC wiring would be a real headache. I have been looking at the Digitrax and other sites to read about DCC. This site seems to be the most honest with the best imformation.

I just have a couple basic (stupid) questions, never having the pleasure of running a DCC system:

  1. How many locomotives can one run at one time with one throttle? Do you get a loco going ( 2 with the Digitrax 402s), then let them run and switch to other locomotives, controlling more than 2 with the same throttle? Or do you add enough throttles for all that you’re running at once?

  2. Power Districts. Can or should you run 2 mainline tracks (observing the 50’ limit with 12 GA wire) with one bus? Or does it need to be all split into 2 districts? The 50’ limit is clear to me, I don[t find where it says how many feet of track or how many locos can be running on that one 12 GA bus.

  3. I am thinking about a sort of 2 shelf layout. Will I need a controller/booster on one level and then another booster on the other in a 14 x 20 room?

Thanks, and any other words of wisdom for me would be appreciated.

2

No questions are stupid, if asking them leads you to better information and better choices then they served their purpose.

In theory you can select a loco, start it running, select another, start it running ad infinitum and they will all keep running until you select them again and re assume control. There are limits, usually imposed by the command station regarding how many can run at once, and of course the amount of power would be a limit. Also there are limits imposed by yourself, namely how adept you are and if you can realistically keep up with many running at once. So indeed you can keep selecting away and the trains will continue to run at their set speed etc until you reach an illogical conclusion [X-)]

You certainly can run that as one power district if you like. IMO if you have plenty of feeders from the bus to the track the distance/length of track is not such an issue. The limits are more related to the number of locos running at once. Or more specifically the current draw in any given section. Sound locos, lit passenger trains all contribute to the draw. The number of amps that you have will depend on your command station and any boosters you might add. Howe

3

Thanks, I appreciate the info. I want to run a DCC layout before purchasing one, and don’t want to buy something that I don’t need. By the same token, I want the system to run smoothly.

I liked your comment about # of locos running at once, of course, that will depend on how well I can run the thing…

4

If you want to run a DCC layout the best thing to do is find a club in your area and give them a visit.

Many of them also have operating sessions where you can see the most out of a system. During our monthly ops sessions we regularly have about 20 people running the same time with their own controllers and loco’s