I was wondering what strategies other people use when assigning DCC ID numbers to locomotives when there’s a conflict in locomotive road numbers? For instance, let’s say I have two locomotives with road number 6088. One loco gets assigned DCC id 6088, but what about the other one? 6089? But then how do people remember the exceptions?
Thanks.
I have not dealt with this issue but here is an idea.
Increase the address to 6089 as you indicate but increase it for the locomotive that is, alphabetically, after the actual 6088 locomotive.
Example:
You have a ATSF locomotive #6088. That address will be 6088. You have a UP locomotive #6088. The UP address will be 6089 since U comes after A in the alphabet.
I would think if you gave each loco a different road number, you wouldn’t have that problem.
And if you did do something out of the norm, without actually changing the road number, the important thing would be how would you remember the exceptions.
How’s the layout coming? Don’t remember any updates lately.
Mike.
I only model one railroad, so there are no conflicts. At the club of course we have multiple people with the same loco, so how we handle it there is first come, first server, with consideration given to those who help with the setup and teardown. First person with a 2102 gets to keep 2102, other people get 21, or 2, or some other open number, and a sticker to put on the bottom witht he number they are using.
–Randy
I wasn’t thinking about the club set up. Now it’s more clear to me what the OP was asking in his first post.
With a club sized layout like he’s building, I can see a fellow operator strolling in with the same loco and road number. The next open number and the sticker seams like a good way.
Mike.
EDIT: Just went through his layout photos. Wow, what an ambitious project!
At my club, we used to do the “first come, first served” method with DCC addresses, resulting in most locos using the cab number for the address. We kept a list on Excel, and every time someone added a loco, we’d update the file. That way, people could keep track. Good idea, right? Wrong. It got the members in the habit of first trying the loco cab number first. Only if that didn’t work did they try and find out what the loco address actually was by either picking up the engine and looking for a sticker, or walking over to the list and checking that.
After a year or two, we went from just a few engines that didn’t match the cab number to 25% that didn’t match. As time went on, the % only increased. But still, the members would try the cab number as it was the easiest thing to do.
What ended up happening was that someone would want to run loco with a cab number of 1234. They’d punch in “1234” and turn the knob. In reality, 1234 was actually 1233 or 1235 because 1234 was already taken. Meanwhile, the real 1234 was moving back and forth while the engineer turned the knob, shorting into a switch or crashing into a turntable pit. This is bad.
Instead, we started a new DCC number policy where we divide all the possible DCC addresses into blocks of 100. We reserved the 0000-0200 numbers for club use and the 9900’s for club guests. The rest are on a list in Excel by the 100’s. Any member can then sign up for a block of 100 numbers. If they need more numbers, they just sign up for another 100 numbers. Some members have just 2 or 3 engines, some members have 300 or 400 engines. So far it’s worked out great, and we have 65+ members and over 1900 engines on the roster (all engines are registered).
Most members use their number series (mine’s 33
Amazingly it’s always worked, we have far more problems with someone keying in a completely wrong number than someoen keying in their cab number except they are the third person to show up with that number so they have a different one. Mainly because the people that do bring duplicates tend to only run their loco, so whatever number they are givem that’s all they know. Second, only one or two people ever program any decoders so there’s nothing left up in the air. There are occasionally some glitches that could be cured by resetting the main command station before every show but I’ve given up trying to convicne people to do that. Someone (you know, important type person) has a couple of consists defined even though in general the only consisting allowed is to use the same address on all locos, and that important someone doesn’t want to have to rebuild his consists every time. WHy am I not the DCC guy? Mainly because I just don;t have the free time to attend every show and in-between work times (layout is modular, there is no permanent home for it to be set up). It took a few fits and starts the first couple of exhibitions with DCC but they got it, and the layout generally runs fine. The biggest proble, had nothing to do with DCC - the older modules all use fitter tracks at the joints, and even frequent repalcement of the rail joiners leaves these as poor contact sections which means anything but a long steam loco with loco AND tender pickups needs to at least be double headed regardless of the size of the train, lest a single unit stall at one of the joints. All the newer and updated modules use butt joints with no fitter pieces, nothing to go dead.
–Randy
Hello all,
I’d renumber one locomotive.
One 4 unit consist I run is all GP40s. 3501, 3502, 3502 and 3507.
One of the 3502s I renumbered 3503.
I haven’t gotten around to actually stenciling the new number on the cab so I took a piece of tape and wrote the new number on it and put it on the top of the cab.
I could have also renumbered it in any one of the open numbers in that sequence; -03, -04, -05,-06, -08, etc.
Because these unit are run in an MU I could have done a simple consist and renumber all of them the same number.
Occasionally I breakup this consist to individual units so having a unique address is necessary.
I also had a GP38-2 with an overlapping number.
Through research I found out that this original number was the prototypical number- -3503, but this number had already be assigned to one of my GP40s.
On my roster 3500 series are GPs for one particular railroad. Rather than going back an reprogramming all the GP40s I just renumbered this unit 3524.
This number was chosen for no apparent reason other than it was in the 3500s and gave me some wiggle room if I expand my GP40 roster for this railroad.
Again, I used the tape patch-out method until I can get around to renumbering this unit.
Finally I have another GP40 from a different railroad.
I was railfanning in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and saw a prototypical unit with the number 1411 from this same railroad.
Once I got home I renumbered this unit to the prototypical unit and used the tape patch method to designate this unit.
Hope this helps.
Did I see someone reference ‘fitter joints’ between modules?
Doesn’t the old trick with some 18ga lamp cord joined to the track close to each end and a simple polarized plug and socket from the hardware store hanging down work for this?
Well you need track for the trains. Electrical connections between modules are made with Anderson Power Pole connectors. None of the actual modules have power problems - it’s the 4" sections of track between them that go dead.
However - I don;t see why no one thought of this before. Each fitter piece can have a feeder attached to it, with a small plug (even a standard 1/8" mono phone plug would be fine, although a stereo one would mean no shorting when plugging in) and then a row of jacks under the end of one of the modules, each conencted to the appropriate bus. Put the fitters in, who cares how loose the rail joiners are, and plug each one in. No dead spots.
–Randy
I’ve renumbered a few of my older locomotives that I had multiple copies of. These are old, old Athearn BB engines that only came in one road number. When buying new engines, I make sure to select a road number I don’t already have. I keep all my engines and rolling stock road numbers on a spreadsheet and print it out to bring to train shows so I don’t accidentally duplicate a car already in my inventory.
Many years ago when I first bought my subways, I anticipated this problem, although it’s never actually happened. The powered and unpowered cars have identical shells, except for the road number, so I swapped the powered body into an unpowered shell so there would never be a conflict if another subway train someday showed up on my layout.