You think you rambled? See this for an example of rambling. I’ll put my answers to your specific questions in amongst your mail below but first some general chat.

 

I would stress that my answers are my opinions and for everyone I offer you will find someone with a different one and some to tell you I am talking out of my backside. To counter this I would just state that I have been an active and fairly prolific modeller since I was about 12 and have now been doing for longer than I care to remember. On the subject of DCC I came to it fairly reluctantly when a customer I custom build for decided to go with DCC sound.

 

He lent me his ZTC system which was enough to set me dead against it. This proved to be the right choice as I’ve spent a six years watching ZTC users blaming their own unique problems on every other manufacturer out there. After that experience I decided I needed to get set up with a system of my own but which one. I played with the Digitrax stuff on a couple of demo layouts at the time and wasn’t impressed, I found the controllers fiddly with too many small buttons and still with a rather crude potentiometer sort of nailed in top. At the time there were problems with reliability of the controller if you believe the online discussion groups of the time. If you get collared by a Digitrax evangelist you may not escape. There is a vocal element that pray to the god Digitrax and all else is rubbish, its like having a conversation with a MAC computer user.

 

Quite by accident when delivering some goodies to a customer at a show I got asked to run a loco on his layout whilst he sorted out a loco that was misbehaving. Talk about in the deep end as this was my first go with Lenz digital. Three hours later I was still running his layout. This decided me and I got myself a Lenz set 90 and whilst in conversation with the UK importer became a Lenz dealer. This was the right decision at the time and not one I have regretted. If you had asked me the question prior to last September I would have recommended buying either the set 90 or set 100 [dependant upon whether you want a knob or buttons to control the speed – with a recommendation to the set 100] and definitely don’t bother with the compact.

 

In September that all changed. You can read the story here: -

 

www.ngtrains.com/Pages/Newsletter/News_Oct_06/news_Oct_06.htm

 

My recommendation to you now would be to go with the NCE PowerCab. It has the following going for it: -

 

1. It only costs £98

2. It behaves like the bigger systems in that it does 4 digit addressing, 12 functions and all the stuff the big systems do

3. It is easy to use – even Americans can work it

4. It speaks English and leads you through all the processes in a Q&A format

5. It remains a valid part of the system as you expand

 

I now use this on my test layout at home and the big 0n3 layout, when it gets built, is having the grown up [and not quite kosher] radio throttles from NCE on it.

 

Let me explain points 2 & 5 a bit more. If you buy most of the “starter sets” they are stripped of functionality and built down to a price and are virtually useless if you are using sound. For example the Lenz compact is about eighty quid but it only does 2 digit addressing and only controls 4 functions. 2 digit addressing limits you to 99 loco’s, so what you may think I’ve only got 3 or 4 but consider my K27 numbered 461 in a 2 digit system you have to give it a number between 1 & 99 and remember what you used whereas in 4 digit system you can call it #461. The aforementioned #461 has a Soundtraxx Tsunami in it with sounds mapped to 12 functions so we can back on the train with a squeal of brakes followed by the clang of the couplers then the venting of the air pipes all controlled by function buttons whilst with the compact you can blow the whistle, ring the bell and turn the lights on and off.

 

If you bought the compact and then bought a set 90 or 100 in theory your compact remains a slave controller in the system but in practice is so lacking in function it gets slung in a drawer and never used again. As a further clue Lenz have withdrawn the compact in the USA [they actually sold it through Atlas as the “commander”]. If you went down the really cheap route with the Bachmann EZDCC you can run your sound fitted loco’s but you are stuffed for programming them as it doesn’t have a screen so you cant get any feedback on what you are doing. Both of these are intended to be the digital equivalent of the nasty little controller you get in a train set and as such they do what is expected of them.

 

Knob or Buttons?

 

Odd thing to say you may think, but as a non DCC user my guess would be that you are thinking you need a control knob to drive the speed of your trains. I believe there are two reasons for this. Firstly there is conditioning, your controllers have always had a knob and you see no reason to change. Secondly somewhere in your mind is the belief that turning the knob half way round will make your train go half speed. I thought the same and the first set I had was a Set 90.

 

When you get in to DCC you will realise this link doesn’t exist. In a non sound DCC loco you set acceleration and deceleration rates into the decoder so when you alter the speed the engine doesn’t respond instantly but smoothly changes speed to the new setting. When you get sound it becomes even more divorced from the controller position as often the acceleration and deceleration is set to a high figure so the loco is slow to respond whilst the sound reacts instantly. This really came home to me when I fitted sound to a pair of class 20 diesels [I know they’re not narrow gauge but they are a flashback to childhood train spotting], with these to move off you whiz them straight up to step 28 and they move of very slowly as the engines rev up and work hard, you then quickly wind the speed steps back to, say, 6 and the engines go back to idle and the engines appear to coast forward, if you want to got faster you go to 28 and back to 10 to rev the engine and the back to idle as you go a bit faster. What this really means is that you start to drive the train and not the controller and you know what its doing by watching and listening to the loco and with the acceleration and deceleration turned up you have to start driving it like the real thing and as if it weighed 125 tons.

 

I have sold the handset off my set 90 and replaced it with the set 100 handset!

 

But then all becomes easier – the NCE controller has buttons and a thumbwheel, best of both worlds!

 

NCE Starter Set Limitations

Of course all starter sets have some limitations, including the NCE system, if they didn’t then no one would buy the full systems.

 

The limitations of the NCE PowerCAB starter set are: -

• Limited current output @ 2 amps

• The first handset must remain plugged in to socket one on the panel

• No dedicated programming track output

 

Unlike full systems that have a separate base station and a handset they are combined in the PowerCAB so the power has to go up to the handset and then back down to the layout. The power comes from a plug top power unit like a mobile phone charger and is then transferred by a flat telephone style cable to the handset. This limits it to around 2 amps or about 3 or 4 sound fitted 0n30 loco’s.

 

Having all the clever stuff in the handset means it has to stay plugged into the panel socket for it all to work. There is a second socket that a second cab can be plugged into. Unplug it and the layout stops!

 

Systems that have a separated base unit mostly have a separate output to a programming track, the NCE starter set doesn’t. If you know nothing about DCC you are probably thinking, “What’s he on about!” Let me try to explain. There are two ways you can program a loco, programming on the main or programming track. The idea of the programming track is that it is a short piece of track so you can guarantee it’s the only loco on it as you are able to change its basic identity. It is also good practice to first power up a newly converted loco on the programming track as it tends to have extra protection in that mode to limit the current to stop the smoke getting out [as you probably know electricity is smoke under pressure and if you let the smoke out it doesn’t work any more]. The NCE PowerCAB has programming track functionality but because of the limited number of wires available up to the handset it turns the whole layout into the programming track with the risk that you can program all the loco’s on the layout to the same ID in one go. Fortunately there is something you can do about this – see below.

 

The alternative is “programming on the main” with this you can change any parameter on a loco except the ID as, simplistically, every programming instruction is prefixed with the loco’s ID.

 

All of the above can be dealt with but how you deal with it requires a bit of forethought and planning. Basically you need to think about the final size of your railroad empire. I’ll cover them in reverse order and reverse cost……

 

1)                   Your empire is going to be a large layout with dozens of engines and you’re going to invite your mates round for multi-operator sessions. Don’t buy the PowerCAB, buy the 5 or 10amp PowerPRO set and you’ll still probably buy more handsets and boosters.

 

2)                   If you are going to end up with a medium sized layout and want two or three operators and up to, say, 10 engines powered up at anyone time buy the PowerCAB and expand as necessary and as the layout grows. As I said somewhere above the basic set will run 3 or 4 loco’s and you can have two handsets plugged into the one panel. The upgrade path goes like this: -

  

With this set up the plug top power supply and the PCP panel supplied with the basic set are not used on the main layout. Instead you wire these up to your dedicated programming track and just plug the PowerCAB handset into it to do programming. At other times the handset is on the main layout. Programming track hint – I have it on my workbench and actually use a rolling road so I can run the loco’s whilst they stay on the spot

 

3)                   Stick with the basis starter set. If your railway isn’t going to grow beyond the capability of the basic system then stick with it and address the programming track issue with a gadget called AUTOSW. What you do with this is to either have a bit of isolated track, rolling road or the end of a siding [separated with and insulated double break]. The two output wires from the PowerCAB go to the AUTOSW from where there are two outputs. One pair of wires goes to the main layout and the other pair goes to the separated bit of track. Normally they all work as the layout but when the AUTOSW sees the handset go into “programming track” mode it shuts off the main layout and leaves just the programming track powered.

 

As you may have gathered from the above I have become and enthusiast for the NCE system. This is to the detriment of the Lenz system which is still an excellent system backed by a warranty second to none. If it has an advantage its availability as it has a UK importer and distributor and NCE has fewer outlets but that is changing and I have found that the NCE warranty is also excellent. Since October I have sold 93 PowerCAB sets, of them we have had two with possible problems [I say possible because we exchanged the handsets but haven’t yet tested the returned ones]. Unfortunately these occurred when I was waiting on a new stock otherwise I would have swapped them from stock. As it was the customers still had new handsets inside of two weeks.

 

Cripes that’s gone on a bit but I’m not done yet there’s more below in your message

Running DC Loco's on DC   Some digital systems claim to run one DC loco. Don’t do it. Those that do this achieve it by distorting the DCC square wave signal and it may well make your loco buzz like a really cross bee. What you can’t hear is the damage its doing to the motor. If you have a fairly simple layout wired as you would for DC you can connect the two wires that would go to the controller to the output of the DCC and run it as a DCC layout. DON’T mix sections of DC and DCC on the layout as you will run a very high risk of frying one or the other systems or the loco’s on it. You would be far better off wiring the layout properly for DCC [see below] and only putting the loco’s on to it as you can chip them.   Re Proper wiring for DCC If you talk the bloke from ZTC he will try to sell you miles of copper tape to use as bus bars around the layout – tell him to get lost.   Whilst you can wire it like a DC layout and just connect the two wires from the controller to the track you are asking for longer term trouble. The potential for trouble grows with the size of the layout and the two potential problems are voltage drop and current carried.   Voltage Drop – this depends on the length of the layout and is made worse by the fact that rail isn’t that great a conductor. Current – on a DC layout you are asking the track to conduct an amp at most at something between 0 & 12v, on DCC layout you are looking at up to 5A and 15v [depends on the system]   If you get too much voltage drop you will have trouble with loss of signal as the DCC control signal is superimposed on top of the power supply and if there is too much loss your loco’s think you are sending them gibberish and they will do strange and random things. The current we are asking the track carry is too much to ask sliding fit fishplates to reliably carry, over time the arc, heat and become insulators.   You deal with voltage drop by running a pair of parallel conductors the length of your layout underneath connecting these to your controller and to your track in several places. On a larger layout you divide it up into districts each with their own booster and bus wires. You avoid the problem with the current and fishplates by soldering a pair of dropper wires to each length of track and connecting these to the bus wires. After two years of intermittent use my demo layout with only a two wire connection started failing at the fishplates. Don’t let the copper tape salesman do you over. Go to your local electrical wholesaler and ask for two drums of 1.5mm or for a bigger layout 2.5mm equipment wire. Get two different colours. To connect to it you can run it between tag strips, strip the insulation and solder to it or get scotchlock connectors from the cars spares shop.