My husband decided to stay home from last Monday’s gathering of our round-robin club because he wasn’t feeling well. Too bad! I showed up and as I was saying “Hi” a radio DCC throttle was shoved into my hand by our host. Ok, I’m gonna run a train, no big deal…Then he announces that a double header is ready to roll, and that our friend George will be on the other engine…Other engine??? Turns out we were going to run this 40 foot long O scale train the way the REAL steam engineers did…each loco independantly operated. The train was so long that neither loco could pull it alone, they had to work in syncrony. Getting started was a real challenge. Each throttle was set up with slightly different momentum effects, and each loco , an SP GS series 4-8-4, and SP 2-10-4 also had different throttle lineararity. We had to watch the driver wheels for slipping, and the mating coupler for crushing. GEEZE it was hard at first. Eventually we got the train running pretty smooth. The feedback system in the DCC would maintain the speed uphill our downhill with no throttle input, so George and I began to relax and enjoy just watching the train go by. . Once it got easy, a monky wrench was thrown in . A passenger train was dispatched with yet another engineer, to cruse the main line between the end of our train and the locos. OK, that would not be a big deal excpet that every so often the dispatcher wanted to let it go by, so we had to slow our train and stop on a LONG siding [ actually the yard bypass lead] , allowing the crack passenger train to go by and then we had to start 'er up again. It became totally clear that this kind of realistic train driving could ONLY be done with DCC. [:D] I had never experienced anything like this in many decades of model RRing! It was challenging and great fun.
If you have ever thought about DCC but couldn’t imagine a real need for it, just think…the session we just had would be outright impossible with traditional DC cab control.
Now that is truly cool! As you say, it couldn’t be done without DCC, and it really duplicates in miniature what double heading steam locomotives was like.
Have Fun,
Tom Watkins
We use a pusher at the club going up Scary Hill which is a 1.7% grade.
The club is DC…Talk about real! There is NO room for errors.One mistake or careless move by the engineers and the train will derail.
How is this done on DC? Good question.
Its easy really.We use walk around throttles our normal train length is 50 cars…All the DS needs to do is flick a block switch like a train was following the first…Very easy to do.[:D] After the helpers cut off at the top of Scary Hill they return light to the helper pocket just like any normal eastbound train.
That sounds just great !!! [^] [:P] [alien] (<-- all green with envy).
Reminds me of a time many years ago when we ran helpers with DC blocks just a tad shorter than train lengths so that the road engine and the helper were not in the same block at the same time. Really great fun !!! Wish we had had DCC then.
Something like this is why I went to DCC - Digitrax actually. I have a rotary snow plow I put a decoder in, and I push it with a Bachman 2-8-0. Independent operation of two units on the same (DT100) Throttle! It often gets comment. I am going to mention this at my club too [8D]
The layout fills a basement around the walls I would guess about 35 x 40 feet or a bit bigger… with a smaller inner loop where the mainline goes first under itself, makes a loop and then over where it entered the peninsula and then continues on around the perimiter wall. There is about 14 inches of grade seperation at the crossing, so the grade is real and requires some effort to make., though not excessive. I’m looking forward to the next running session. The layout is designed mostly for ‘running trains’ , not for way-freight switching, and for running, it sure it is fun. We usually have 2 or 3 trains runing, One will have priority and require the others to take a siding to be passed when it catches up. Thanks for reading my story about the double heading…it was really something!.