Now the DCC folks should cry "FOUL". You've just substituted extra wiring and
toggle switches together with careful placement of the engines at the time of
creating the consist for the relatively simple commands required to program a
"consist". If one of your model locomotives runs significantly faster or slower
than the rest, you can forget "consisting" them altogether (you can adjust that
with programming under DCC). And carefully positioning the locomotive at just
the right place so you can kill power to it and still couple the next
locomotive is no "realistic" either. A lot of what can be done in DCC can also
be accomplished in two rail DC with enough wire, toggle switches, relays,
cleaver circuit design, etc. It's just harder and less flexible.
BTW, I don't have DCC - yet!
Pieter
Robert Nicholson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:<SNIP>
Anybody who attended the 1982 NASG convention in Cleveland, or the
MRIA show in Buffalo, NY, in 1983, saw me make up and break up diesel
locomotive CONSISTS ("lash-ups" [>:(] to DCC proponents) with DC and
no five finger switch engines.
I do it on [what passes for] my own layout by having sub-blocks on my
engine tracks. I run a locomotive up to the one I want to couple into,
couple it, stretch the slack to make sure it coupled, then turn on the
power for the dead section, and the locomotives roll on down the lead.
No time-consuming "programing", reading manuals, figuring computer
codes, etc., just to get two locomotives to run together.
Personally, I don't understand Bob Werre's comment about running
helpers without DCC. Running mid-train helpers (or pushers) is,
prototypically, a matter of proper train make-up.
When Santa Fe ran "mid-train" helpers back in the '70's, they always
put the helpers two/thirds of the way back in the train, thus they
were always pushing some of the cars ahead of them, and pulling the
ones behind, keeping inordinate buff and stress forces at a minimum
throughout the train. Kindraka and I did this at the 1981 S fest with
our Locomotive Workshop units with great success.
You could even see where the slack was ahead of the helpers, and
realize why there would be no "stringlining" on curves. Adding weight
to open cars decreased the slack, removing it increased it, but as
long as the helpers were pushing some cars ahead of them and pulling
the cars behind them, there was never a problem.
Actually, Santa Fe actually had an MU position on the remote throttle
where all locomotives in the train responded to the throttle on the
leading unit, similar to the DC control Jim and I were using. The only
problem we ever had was with a pre-DCC minded official who tried to
set a car out with individual control to "show us how it was done".
Took 45 minutes to do a 5 minute job. Little did I realize how this
would be the gold-standard hair-tearing Standard Operating Procedure
in the waning days of my career with computerized locomotives, period
- and management thought they were doing a terrific job.
More on request, in the meantime you DCC guys keep wasting your time
and money on DCC manuals and computer glitches. The 60-yr. old
free-for-the-taking AF 50-Watt transformers that power my 30-year old
analog throttles just keep on hummin'. I know what they're made of -
the question is, "What are yours made of" (apologies to Teddy
Roosevelt in "Night at the Museum")
Bob Nicholson
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