To kill or not to kill the tracks in a staging yard, that is the question. Is it better in the age of DCC just to leave the tracks powered, or should at least some (like those with sound units or DC motors) be turned off until that train is scheduled out?
I am in the process of rebuilding a 9 track staging yard and converting it from 2 cab DC to DCC. A total rewire and the control panel (for the turnouts) will be moved / replaced / rebuilt too. The attached engine house will have killable tracks.
I am in the planning stages of a new yard on my layout and one of my friends was over last night and he was talking about that you have to wire the yard in blocks and do this and do that. I thought about what he said and figured it wasn’t worth the effort to try and explain his misconception regarding dcc
Besides all the neat stuff dcc has to offer like bells and whistles literally for me one of it’s biggest attractions is it’s simplicity when it comes to wiring a layout. run the two dcc buss wires. underneath the entire layout solder feeder wires generally maybe every three or four feet or so and connect said feeder wires to the buss and your done. The electronics do all the hard work for you. No need to run separate power blocks and have endless miles of wiring under your layout and switches to control those blocks, sidings or where ever you want to park your train. Simply just shut down your locomotive on any given line and fire it back up when ever you want. Sure you can wire each track so you can kill the power to it etc. and wire in blocks throughout your layout like we used to have to do with dc but my question is why? It’s like fixing up and old car that you want to drive around maybe back and forth to work on the nice days so would you put old bias ply tires on it instead of radials?
It’s your railroad to do with as you so please but for me I embrace technology and use it to my advantage where ever possible, if it makes something simpler or less of a head ache for me I’m all for it.
I’m putting in a 4-track staging yard, and I’m planning kill switches.
Sound engines. After a while, having too many of them all going at once is just noise.
Illuminated passenger cars. It just drains power to have them on. If you’re using incandescent bulbs, you’re reducing bulb life as well.
Selecting the wrong engine. If you’re down by the docks and you accidentally select an engine that’s in staging, you’ll wonder why your Dockside isn’t going anywhere until you hear the crash. If the engine is on a killed track, nothing happens.
How much power have you got? Most of today’s DCC systems can run 10 or more locomotives, even with sound. But if you’ve got a 9-track staging yard, and you’re running 2 or 3 engine consists, well, you’re getting close to the limit just idling the sound engines in staging. If your staging is on a separate circuit breaker module or built into an auto-reverser controlled loop, then the total current is limited by the module, not by the limit of your system or booster.
Kill switches are about a dollar. You’ll need some wire, too. But, doing the kill-switch wiring, including insulating one rail, while you’re laying the track is a lot easier than going back and gapping the track after it’s all ballasted and surrounded by scenery. And if you decide you don’t like the kill switches, just leave them on.
I’ll second Mr. Beasley’s answer. I have a small, six track staging yard with each track switched and since I have added the switches, I’ve saved myself a lot of trouble with mis-selected locos. I guess that I should be more careful but I’m at the age where “senior moments” occur with increasing frequency. I also feel more comfortable storing my sound equipped engines on a dead track while they are not in use during an operating session even though I can put them into shutdown mode with a function key. The same goes for my lighted passenger cars.
I, too, will second Mister Beasley’s answer, with an additional caveat.
Perfectly good slide switches with more than adequate capacity can be had three or four for a buck, much less if bought in quantity.
If you have hot frogs and route-selecting turnout electricals, you don’t even need separate electrical switches. In my four-track Mikasa yard, if the points are set so the selected route is to the cassette dock, all four staging tracks are as (electrically) dead as the Holy Roman Empire. In my admittedly biased opinion, NOT being able to run a locomotive into the trailing end of a mis-set turnout in the netherworld - priceless!
If your staging yard is double ended and there might be trains moving through both throats at the same time, a few additional bits of circuitry might be needed to make the situation completely idiot-proof. In analog DC all it takes is a couple of 10 for a buck diodes. DCC has to have a bit more.
This subject has come up several times in the last year or two, and has special interest to me as I am building a new HO layout (replaces previous 1993-2008), my first with DCC.
In short, I’ve wired in a DPST (yes, you could use other types) for my two passenger staging tracks, four freight staging tracks, 2 diesel terminal tracks, and 2 steamer terminal tracks.
There are a number of reasons to do this - i.e. to shut off excess sound, excess power usage - but the one that really hit home for me was a $300 creeping BLI steamer that almost took a dive. Yes, I had left it on speed step 1 when I parked it, which of course was operator error. But it really it home, that shut offs were well worth the effort.
Another [tup] on mr B’s post. I have all sound engines and am planning on installing kill switches for a couple of sidings so that I don’t have to remove the loco’s I’m not using. I could keep them on but don’t want to hear them all the time. All it does is expand your options.
I didn’t have one creep, I just called up the loco in front of me only to find the throttle was assigned to another parked loco on the other side of the layout. While I stared at the loco in front of me wondering why it didn’t move, the other loco ran off a siding and five feet to the floor…still runs, not too well…At least it wasn’t brass. Kill switches all around for all the reasons previously mentioned.
I second Mr. Beasley’s comments-- controlling power is useful, even in the DCC era. I want to be able to kill power to locomotive storage tracks, staging tracks, etc. I hadn’t thought about the passenger cars, but them too. That makes sense.
Also I want to put emergency power-kill switches stationed around the layout. I did a thread about this a year or so ago. Some bright person suggested making the switches short the track and then letting the DCC boosters do the dirty work. Not a bad idea if you have everything set up correctly. I want an emergency kill switch in relatively easy reach from anywhere on the layout so that anybody can kill the power if necessary.
Not a good idea if you AREN’T running DCC! On my layout, shorting a track in Nonomura will have ZERO impact on a runaway in Hirayama.
My recommendation (to be implemented on my layout when I have the capability to run more than one locomotive) is a string of normally-closed pushbuttons located within arm’s reach of anyplace where a supervisor might be standing, wired to open the contacts of a relay that HAS to be closed for the 120 power to reach the hot side of all track power sources. One button-push and the whole railroad drops off-line. No automatic reset - you have to push a reset button at the relay site to get the system back up.
Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964 - as safely as possible)
Mr Beasley has given the best advice I can think of. Very well though out and very well stated.
I have a very small DCC layout, but don’t want the locos sitting on my meager 3 spur yard/engine service area draining the power out of DCC system and locos I want to run, so kill switches to deaden the tracks when “not in use” are in order.
on my Santa Fe I have a total of 5 staging yards, plus the online yards, which means there are a lot of trains/engines on the railroad at one time. I am one of the lazy people who make permanent consists instead of breaking them up and doing them over time after time. I have over 100 consists set up at this time using NCE. A few times during operating sessions, I have had someone key in the wrong consist number even though they are holding the car deck in their sweaty hands, and activate another consist by accident.
So I ended up using either switch routings or on/off toggles in the staging yards so the problem doesn’t often appear anymore. Of course all my consists are kept on a laptop which is part of the “railroad offices”. Also the loco card (I use Micromarks) has the consist number in the pocket of the cardd. All in all, works pretty darn good.
One thing I have not seen mentioned is how being powered on for extended time while not being run will effect the life of the speaker and sound unit in the locomotive. I am sure every thing in the model railroad industry has a finite number of hours of use before it fails. My thoughts are to kill power where it is not being used and there are a multitude of reasons for doing so listed. There is one reason for leaving it on though and if you wanted to do so on occasion you would still have the option do do so.