If you believe that Rail-Lynx articles should be included in MR, please send them your opinion. For those who are not familiar with Rail-Lynx, you may have read the one sentence coverage in Lionel Strang’s DCC Made Easy. He is dead wrong in his description. He claims that the controller must be pointed directly at the loco with the installed sensor like a TV remote. Clearly, he is not familiar with the system. As a group, we have simply installed standard white ceiling tiles in our basements, put the tether of the controller around our necks, and click away at the controls while letting the controller send the signal toward the ceiling. It then bounces and spreads back and well a blind man could not miss. We have been operating hands free for 10 years and we still cannot understand why the other systems are so popular. Rail-Lynx is cheaper, does not need a command module, does not require special power packs or boosters, just a controller, board with sensor in loco, and your choice of power, totally wireless. Dial in the number of the loco and away you go. Thanks. Jim Peters
Rail-Linx is also a dead-end, proprietary command control system. It doesn’t support sound effects, consisting, precision control of the motor input, signalling, etc, etc. While there are a few things that are nice about the system (voltage to the track, all computers either in your hand or in the engines), the system will be gone in a few years, due to it’s own inertia (yes, there are still people out there that use CTC-16 too. I know of at least one car with an 8-track deck that still works…).
And who wants a shiny black opto sensor sticking out of their engines?
We had it at the club I belonged to. The IR receiver is hard to hide - some drilled holes in their radiator fan to put it there, others put it in the cab, but what about locos like P2K with figures in the cab? They had the repeater system for control in hidden track areas, but it didn’t work very well. And it DID have to be pointed almost directly at the loco for control. The double-deck design of the layotut with rows of flourescent lights under the upper deck to illuminate the lower did not make for very good ‘bounce’ They have since scrapped it all and gone to conventional DCC.
–Randy
Our club also did an in depth evaluation of Rail_Lynx when we were considering new command systems several years back. I am certain it has improved since then, but we rejected it for a couple of major reasons. First was because of the limitation of channel numbers (255 as I recall). The other was that almost 1/3 of our mainline and one major yard is hidden trackage (well at least hidden from normal room lighting), and would have required special work to “light” or bounce the infra-red signal to those parts.
We re-evaluated our control system a couple years ago and rejected Rail_Lynx simply because it isn’t standard. We had people not who would not even consider joining the club because of our Railcommand system. They wanted to use their NCE, Lenz, Digitrax, MRC, or other brand DCC stuff not only on their layouts, friends layouts, but also at the club. Not having to have two fleets of locomotives, two different controllers, etc. is a good thing. Having multiple vendors for components is great.
The purpose of my short editorial was to hopefully promote Rail-Lynx users to share their opinion with MR. DCC systems and Rail-Lynx have both positive and negatives. You mention proprietary command control system. Reading Lionel Strang again, he suggests “not mixing” the systems to avoid problems. Which would, in essence, make all systems proprietary. For the sake of argument, put your Loco on a differenent system and try to run it. It won’t work until programmed, and that is a maybe. Rail Lynx will run on any system…no programming…no modifications…as long as their is 14.5 volts in the track…no boosters, no programming…no command station, just a controller and the loco. Any power source. Again, my posting was not to convert DCC users to give up their preferred system, but to get Rail Lynx users to only request MR to print articles about Rail Lynx.
Obsolescence is of course a concern. But I am afraid, once again, it may not only be for Rail Lynx. In fact, Lionel Strang suggests again that wireless control via Radio signals will be the standard of the future. He misses the advantage of infrared unfortunately, believing it works exactly like a tv remote. This technology was developed before DCC standards were established and has worked dependably the entire time. Additional features can be added.
Many Rail Lynx users also do not like marring a shelf model with the sensor, so they don’t. However, you now get two sensors, which can be placed in the cab, one on each side, totally eliminating installing the sensor on top. As operators, we are comfortable with the appearance for the ease of true wireless control. I am laughing when reading “only plug it in once, until you need to send another message.” We are definitely too spoiled to be plugging in…like the previous Keller On-board system. We are not happy with the radio control of NCE. The controller is too complex and you can’t just hit stop and go…you got to hold the button longer to get the message to send, and there are blind spots. Again, I am getting off track here. I just wanted Rail Lynx users to write and only if they wanted to. DCC is great, it is just that we prefer Rail Lynx and would like to indeed see it also become mainstreamed for what we see as true operational control. We have operated as a club, once a week, 16 operators is no problem with true wireless control. We focus on ops, not on programming command stations. There is no command station, no booster, no “special” power supply. Controller and loco…any power supply to track and away you go!
You’re mistaken there. I can take my LENZ decoder-equipped Mikado from my DC layout to my friend’s NCE DCC layout, and it will run flawlessly. The ONLY programming that it had was to change it’s address from 3 to 1850 (the loco’s road number).
DCC is standardized in that respect, any decoder will work on any system regardless of manufacturer. Now, I can’t plug an NCE Procab into a Digitrax SEB, but that’s because the control bus is NOT part of the DCC standard.
note - I didn’t INTEND to get the DCC one, I sorta lucked out that decoders are dual mode… otherwise it would have gone back.
You’re completely wrong. I run my equipment with a mix of decoders on Lenz, Digitrax, and NCE systems in my area with no reprogramming at all.
Obviously, your purpose is just to post a long advertisement for Rail-Lynx.
Nice idea, really great guy who invented it, but the system is a a dead-end now.
Hi Randy,
Lighting blinds the signal. We have also discoverd that definite downside. I don’t have a solution for a double-deck layout. Quite frankly, there may not be one. The hidden repeaters work if, and only if, the hidden areas permit a larger area for bouncing the signal. Again, for a double stack layout…I don’t think it is possible and a DCC system would be the logical choice. Have you given up on wirelss control? Do you send the signal thru the track? Since your group was familiar with Rail-Lynx and total wireless control, I am wondering what you guys use now. For my home layout, I am thinking of mixing, but so far I have experience only with NCE, Digitrax and Atlas. While good, they would change our operating expectations. What does your group suggest? Have you made any modifications? Thanks, Jim
That is great to hear. As far as my comment about mixing components, I only repeated what Lionel Strang mentions in his book. My mixing experience is only running my individual loco with my controller on various DCC layouts. Since I am interested in expanding my layout, I have been thinking of also incorporating DCC. Which system or systems do you like that have wireless control? I am looking for a system that does not have to be plugged in around the layout. Years ago we found the Keller On-board system caused operators to compete when running to plug back in. Thanks, Jim
I can’t believe Lionel Strang would have written that he couldn’t use locos with one brand of decoders on a different brand DCC. That is patently false as anyone with DCC can attest. I happen to use Digitrax but most of my decoders are NCE and TCS. TCS ONLY makes decoders, they don’t (yet) make a DCC system, so it would be pretty useless if they couldn’t be controlled by any other brand of DCC system.
What I suspect Lionel said was that back BEFORE the NMRA DCC standards, you had all kinds of systems like Keller On-Board, CVP Railcommand, and PSI Dynatrol. Those were NOT compatible with one another. This was the primary reason none of those systems became totally dominant. You were stuck with one manufacturer’s control system AND decoders (generally called receivers then). If that company went belly-up, you were stuck.
–Randy
And speaking of Keller On-Board, anybody want to buy one cheap? [:D]
Sounds like you need to buy an advertisement for the product.
Hello Jim,
I don’t know what the situation is with the current producers of Rail-Lynx. However, when Jerry Bellina, its originator, was alive, I repeatedly asked him for review samples, and also offered to purchase a Rail-Lynx throttle both for review and for use on our club layout. (We used Dynatrol then, and a Rail-Lynx locomotive could have easily piggybacked on the 13.5VDC track power.) For whatever reasons, Jerry always refused either to submit a review sample or to simply sell us the product. I knew Jerry personally and I thought we always got along well, but on this point I couldn’t budge him.
The reason there has been little mention of Rail-Lynx in “Model Railroader” has had nothing to do with our magazine, so if you want to start a letter/e-mail campaign, please direct it where it may do some good.
Thanks,
Andy
Hey, Andy–
No offense intended, but could you not have had an individual simply order one for testing?
As journalists, should you be put in the position of not reviewing a product because a manufacturer doesn’t want you to? How does that help your readers, the consumers, know whether they should spend their money on it?