Do you need to have feeders to each siding or just to the sidings that a loco will stay at and isolate that siding only. I know that the programming siding schould be isolated from the rest of the layout. Mine is a piece of unitrack that has bumpers on each end is all by it self next to the command unit.
That depends a lot of the brand of turnouts you are using. If you have Peco turnouts, for example, you don’t need separate feeders on the siding unless you have a control panel with toggle switches and want to be able to park something on the siding. A Peco turnout disconnects power to a siding when it is set for straight through operation, and will turn power to the siding on when set for that direction, provided you have not used any insulated rail joiners.
Atlas turnouts will keep power on the siding continuously, regardless of their setting. Shinohara turnouts will cause an electrical short if the frog is not isolated with an insulated rail joiner if the siding is double-ended. In the case of a dead-ended siding, this is no problem.
I have no experience with Unitrack and its turnouts, so the only advice I could give you is to try it without a toggle switch and see what happens. If you encounter an electrical short, then an insulated rail joiner and toggle switch will be necessary. Your DCC system will shut down if there is an electrical short in your track.
I agree, although I think Randy Rinker would advocate (he has previously) isolating a programming track completely from the rest of the layout…it is risky programming decoders while other locos are on the layout because we sometimes forget to throw switches before pressing “enter”. Personally, with Randy’s well meant (but hopefully not prophetic) advice, I leave one area of track gapped from the rest of the layout, and I have to throw a switch to power it. That is where I do my programming.
In my opinion, you want the programming track connected to the rest of the layout so you don’t have to handle your locos any more than necessary. Unless you like repairing detail damage, that is. [swg]
With that said, you need to wire the programming track in properly with gaps and a dead isolation section otherwise you run the risk of blowing the programming circuits in your command station.
I describe how to wire a programming track properly to avoid any risk to your command station in my DCC thread … somewhere on here.
Maybe someone with more energy than me can dig this thread out of the bowels of this forum once again … sheesh.
if i read your question correctly what you’re asking is “if i’m never going to drive a loco onto a siding and i’m just going to park cars there , do i need to run a feeder to it ?”
the answer is generally no , you may want to in case you ever need to park the local engine there while the limited blows past , but if you’re sure that only cars are going to go there then no feeder is needed
If you really want the program track to be part of the railroad, read Joe’s post above. This is the only ‘safe’ way to do it that I have seen. Myself, the program track is next to the computer that has Decoder Pro on it(and is isolated from the layout). If I really need to do a ‘reset’ and reload of the configuration; the engine is 0-5-0’d to the program track. I have all of the config info on the computer, and can ‘zap’ the engine in about a minute,
Jim Bernier