DCC Observations

• If your layout is layout is already set-up for block control, it is a just a matter of connecting the DCC control center up.
• I have a big fleet of locomotives and I hear it will cost as much as $75+ to convert each loco to DCC.
• I don’t have to worry about reverse loops or wiring for turntables.
• I don’t need to have any blocks with DCC.
• Wiring turnouts.

Of course there are more items and when I think of them I will post what I find and give you my honest opinion.

1. If your layout is layout is already set-up for block control, it is a just a matter of connecting the DCC control center up.
This is not really the case. I saw one example of this in a popular book on DCC, more or less stating this can be done. Yes it can be done, but when you originally wired your layout, what type of wiring did you use. Like most home layouts you probably used 20 guage wire or smaller. When I refer to smaller you should remember that the number for the gauge of the wire is inverse to the actual size of the wire. So a #12 gauge wire is larger in diameter than a 22 gauge wire. Anyway if you have runs of wire over 40 ft, you should at least go with 14 or 12 gauge wire as a bus wire. You should have one bus wire for each rail of track. Power to the track should consist of drop wires from the track itself to a bus wire. The gauge for the bus wire can be anywhere from 18 to 24 gauge, and probably shouldn’t be more than 2ft in length.

Anyway, like I said above most home layouts don’t have this heavy of wiring for their block control. A guide to use is:

Run of wire up to 10ft you can use #16 wire.

Run of wire from 10ft to 50ft use #14 wire.

Run of wire over 50ft use #12 wire.

If your existing layout is wired with this heavy of wire, then you may not have any problems, unless you have some reverse loops and or a turntable, then there is special consideration, which we will discuss later.

As for the GRR Model Railroad, I am fortunate enough to be starting from scratch. I am using two #12 bus wires. One wire for each side of the track. For each section of track, I am soldering a 12 inch to 16 inch long 18 guage drop wire. I am keeping my wires color coded, one bus wire is in red insulation and the other is white. For my drop wires, I am using home thermostat wire. This is two stranded wire, with each strand insulated in different colors. I found some that was red and white. This way it will be pretty simple: Red to Red, White to White.

Why am I using a drop for every piece of track. This is easy to answer. It is reliability. Yes, it can be tricky wiring such heavy wire to a piece of track and you risk melting those plastic ties. But if you do it right you shouldn’t have any problems.

How do you do it right? 1.) Pre-tin both ends of the wire, after you stripped about 1/4 inch of insulation off each end. 2.) Use a clean soldering tip and a good soldering iron. I use a 45watt iron. 3.) Use thin electrical solder. 4.) Before pre-tinning use solder paste flux on the tip of the drop wire. 5.) I use liquid flux when connecting the wire to the track. 6.) Use heat sinks.

My choice for heat sinks were small copper battery clamps that you can get at most hardware stores, copper draws heat away quickly, but it also draws some solder. The reason I like the battery clamps is that they cover more space and the rubber tips on the ends make them easier to remove when done soldering. There are some small commercially available aluminum sinks out there, but they are small and the don’t draw heat as well as copper. Further most of them don’t have any rubber tips and you can burn your finger tips if you try to remove them to soon. The advantage to them is that they do not attract solder.

2. I have a large fleet of locomotives and it will cost me about $75 dollars to convert each one.

Well this used to be the case, but DCC has come a long way in the last couple of years. There is a larger selection of decoders and some manufacturer’s are already equiping new loco’s with DCC decoders. But you can have some locomotives ready run when you buy them and then slowly convert your fleet. There is plenty of information now available on installing decoders. Some locomotives you will have to hard-wire, Athearns are a good example. You will have to do away with those clips and probably change out the wheel sets. But if you can do that, you shouldn’t have any problems with the decoders. Also some if not most DCC systems have instructions on installing decoders. Other locomotives are already wired for DCC, you just buy the appropriate decoder and plug it in. Also, you may have to swap out the headlight for an LED. But the LED’s for locomotives are also available at your better hobby shops, and some of these shops will install these decoders, so that may be an option for some of your older steamers. Or you may want them to install one in one of your regular locomotives, and when you get it home you can see how it was done and use that for an example.

The price of decoders has come down. You can get basic ones for as low as $20 or less, or you can buy the expensive sound ones for as much as $150. After you get a couple professionally installed you can start installing them yourself.. So that big fleet will not take as long to convert. Instead of buy more freight cars, buy a decoder instead.

One caveat on decoders. The cheaper decoders may not support all you want to do. Some cheap decoders will only support two digit adressing and only give you forward and reverse. The more expensive ones may support up to four digit addresses, more light functions including bright, dim, on and off and have room for other effects such as MARS or Beacon lights, or other lights you may want to install such as ditch lights. Do as much reading as you can on your potential decoder purchase. Tony’s Train Exchange, Loys Toys and other retailers on the web contain information on the decoders.

3. I don’t have to worry about reverse loops or turntables.

This is a major misconception. You still have to worry about this initially. However, if you wire the reverse section correctly, you will not have to worry about having to flip the reversing switch. You will still have to isolate both rails of the reversing section. Then you can wire the reversing section to a DCC reversing module OR power booster. My recommendation is to go with the reversing module. I bought a reversing module from Tony’s Train Exchange for about $40 including shipping. The module is a ciruit board and you should enclose it in a project box. Radio Shack sells project boxes, that will hold the module, for about $5. You will need a reverse module for every reverse loop, turntable or wye. I would suggest that you keep these to a minimum on your layout. On the GRR I only have one turntable.

4. I don’t need blocks with DCC.

DCC does eliminate the need for a majority of blocks. However. if you have a reverse loop or turntable that section of track will need to be electically isolated from the rest of the layout. If you have a large layout, you may want to have blocks in order to isolate short circuits. This can be done by turning the blocks on and off until you find the block that is causing the short. Also if you have some locomotives you want to just park on your layout, it is better to have them sitting on a track that you can turn off the power to. There has been speculation and claims that people have damaged their locomotive or decoders by leaving a locomotive sitting on a powered section of track. It has something to do with the fact that the decoder and the engine is still receiving power and signals from the track and that the locomotive and the electronics will get hot.

What have I done on the GRR? Well I will have 4 sections of track where I can turn off the power and still maintain mainline and yard operations. This is accomplished by using DPDT switches (not turn-outs) and DPST switches. I bought the DPST switches at my local Sears Hardware Store, after not being able to find them at Radio Shack (Radio Shack was out and didn’t know when the next order would come in.) I use the DPST switch as an on off switch. I connected the switch between the drop wires and the bus wire. This way I can park a the locomotive on this track and turn off the power. One such track is in my planned diesel service facility area, and the other area is on a two track siding, next to a planned industrial area. The DPDT switches are in two locations. One area is the track leading to the turntable. I know I said this will be protected by a reversing module, but if I am thinking and in the right mood I can switch the polarity or just turn off the power to this area and park some loco’s as well. The other DPDT switch will be used for my programming track. This was recommended by North Coast Engineering. The programming track allows one person to program a locomotive while another person can run on the layout. After the programming is done the programing track can be turned off or turned over to track power with the DPDT switch.

I recommend that you use a small indicator lamp (12vDC at Radio Shack for about 2 for $2) and connect this up to your DPST switches to indicate track power. For the DPDT switches (especially the programing track) you may want to use two different color lamps to act as indicators of track status.

In summary, you still need blocks with DCC, but not nearly as many. Also as several adds have stated about DCC: “Run your trains not your track.”

DCC WIRING DIAGRAM !

I have posted a crude wiring diagram of my DCC system in the model railroad gallery. Look it over and pay attention to the warning. Below I am going to write the text that should accompany the diagram. You might want to print out the diagram (using a color printer) and refer to it as you read the text. If you choose to bounce from page to text, well that is fine too. Anyway, feel free to email me if you have any questions. I am not an electronics expert or schooled in electrical theory. I am just an average model railroader, who is trying to make sense of this DCC stuff. Hopefully this information will help you out, or inspire you to look for more information. Don’t rely on my information as gospel. I just try to be accurate and pass on what I have found out. It may work for you or it may not. Remember, my layout is a simple loop with a turntable. Therefore, per DCC parlance, I have two power districts, and only one power supply. A.J. (Discussion continues on page 2 of GRR DCC)

That being said, I can tell you that this is the way, I plan to wire my DCC System. The only hold up is getting another “Power Shield” from Tony’s Train Exchange. This expense was unexpected. Anyway as you have noticed, I am not the best artist in the world. Also note that my layout is a two bus-wire layout. I do not have common rail wiring. (Though sometimes I wish I would have never gone into DCC, but that is just frustration talking,) Anyway, I have tried to keep things simple in the diagram. Red and Black are your +;- polarity. It is important not to change them around. The Red and Black dots on the diagram are where the connections are made. Just because, (due to my poor drawing) that lines cross over each other, it means a connection. If you assume this then you are wrong. The connections are at the dots. Also notice that I may have put in two extra dots ( red and black) coming out of the “Power House Pro” going to the power shields. The first set of red and black dots directly beneath the “Power Shield” do not represent connections to another wire. The only place you won’t see dots are at the Yellow and Orange lines from the power supply to the Power House Pro. The only thing I find unnerving is that NCE did not give you big connectors for the power supply wires or the wires going to the power shields and tracks. I don’t know what NCE’s thinking was, but it looks like you will be lucky to get any guage bigger than 22 into the Power House Pro. I am not schooled in Electronics and Electrical Theory, but it seems curious that NCE recommends 12 gauge wire for the bus wire if have runs of more than 50 feet so that you can connect the drop wires from the track to it. But when you get to the power shields then to the Power House, you have to use smaller and smaller wire. It looks like I will be dropping from 12 gauge bus to an 18 gauge wire to run to the “Power Shields” to about a 22 gauge stranded wire or smaller to fit into the Power House Pro.

5. Turnout Wiring.

I highly recommend Allan Gartner’s Wiring for DCC Page. You can get there by going to my home page and clicking on the DCC webring hub. There you should be able to find his page.

The GRR used DCC friendly Atlas turnouts for all turnouts except for a Shinorha double crossover.

Allan Gartner got into a huge discussion about these double crossovers and power routing them.

Since I did not power route mine, I decided to go with Caboose Industries hand throws instead. Of course this does not eliminate the short circuit a double crossover poses. What I have done instead is:

* Cut a gap in the middle of both outside rails in the turnout (see photo in construction photo page, before I filled the gap). I then filled the gap with styrene.
* I wire a drop wire to each rail before the switch points. This means eight wires, one for each rail.
* This essentially makes your crossover into four separate switches.

I have done this and I have not encountered any problems yet. But I should also remind you I haven’t looked arount to see if my power shield is doing its job. So with this set-up, a train going through the crossovers has not brought the layout down

Well this about somes up my original 5 items on DCC. Now I plan to discuss some other DCC topics.

I have posted a picture of how I did the Shinorah double crossover in the Construction Photo Album as of 6/15/2002.

Yahoo Groups

I know this is a MSN Community, but we are supposed to use the web to our full advantage. Well I have recently found that there are some great DCC discussion groups over at Yahoo. I belong to the NCE DCC Group myself and found some really useful answers to my questions about certain quirks of my system. I suggest that if you are thinking of purchasing a DCC system or already purchased one go see if you can find your group at Yahoo. These groups are free and you may have to come up with a Yahoo ID, but overall the experience is worth it.

Trainorders.com

I am ajy6b in this discussion group as well. There are several posts about all types of railroad topics. There are model railroading posts as well

Decoders

I have recently purchased several decoders and will be installing them soon, or as time allows. Hopefully I will be able to take some pictures of the installs and post them on this board. If all goes well this may be by late spring, if not sooner. My hold-up right now is finding a good cheap source for white LED’s. If anyone knows of a source let me know. Just email me at ajy6b@hotmail.com

Speaking of LED’s if you have used the so called “white” LED you will notice that the light has a distinct blue cast to it. A way to correct this is to go to your nearest hobby shop, (you might be better off if the hobby shop also sells a lot of model cars and planes) and pick up a jar of Tamyia Clear Orange paint. This paint is clear, you paint the LED this color and you get a more subdued yellow light that is very close to prototype headlight color.

Also you can make LED’s smaller. If you have a tight fit you can file down the plastic of the LED. I recently took a 5mm LED and used a bench grinder (a hand file will work to but is not as fast) to make the LED fit in the space I needed. As long as you don’t file away any of the metal or expose the metal that is inside the plastic of the LED, you should not have any problems.

3/31/2002 Revised 6/15/2002 This is just a short note about LED’s. Most of us when we did our first install may have got lucky and got it right. You have a 50/50 chance. Anyway here is a more sure-fire way. Look at your LED, it has two metal tabs going into the plastic of the LED. THE SHORTER ONE IS THE POSITIVE LEAD. The positive lead is the one you want to solder to the function outlet of your decoder. The other lead goes to the common. The resistor can go to either. The tail then (with the resistor) then goes to the decoder position marked for either front or rear headlight. The other side )metal tab gets soldered to the common. Yes, you can clip the metal leads to the LED to fit your application, but remember the original short lead is the positive.

If you have any further questions feel free to email me.

A.J.