Power district

[Michael Hodgson]

22 minutes ago, WIMorrison said:

IIRC it was actually the advertising for Hornby Zero One that used the 'only two wires' statement 😁

Indeed, but that was just a proprietary form of DCC that didn't conform to NMRA standards.

[WIMorrison]

Not sure that the NMRA DCC ‘standard’ existed when Zero 1 was conceived 😀
 

just checked and NMRA published their DCC ‘standard’ in October 1993 - which was 14 years after Hornby started selling Zero 1 😏

Edited April 28 by WIMorrison

[Michael Hodgson]

NMRA was founded before WW2.  Zero One was 1979, but there were a number of early electronic/digital systems, mostly incompatible with one another (just like OO couplings!)

 

Not sure when the Americans decided that a common set of standards for this would be a good idea.

[Oldddudders]

And before Zero 1 there was Astrac, developed by General Electric. I think C J Freezer did an exposé on it in the early '60s in RM. 

[WIMorrison]

28 minutes ago, WIMorrison said:

just checked and NMRA published their DCC ‘standard’ in October 1993 - which was 14 years after Hornby started selling Zero 1 😏

 

11 minutes ago, Michael Hodgson said:

Not sure when the Americans decided that a common set of standards for this would be a good idea.

 

😇

[WIMorrison]

4 minutes ago, Oldddudders said:

And before Zero 1 there was Astrac, developed by General Electric. I think C J Freezer did an exposé on it in the early '60s in RM. 

 

ASTRAC by GE - The DCCWiki

[Nigelcliffe]

31 minutes ago, WIMorrison said:

Not sure that the NMRA DCC ‘standard’ existed when Zero 1 was conceived 😀
 

just checked and NMRA published their DCC ‘standard’ in October 1993 - which was 14 years after Hornby started selling Zero 1 😏

 

Published seven years after Hornby __stopped__ selling Zero 1.

 

    

 

 

Edited April 28 by Nigelcliffe

[IRC]

I’m toying with the same scenario currently. I am just about to wire up my oval that could have four trains continuously running plus some shunting in the yard or depot and have bought a digitrax PM74, as I was planning on separately wiring my running lines via the PM74, but as it’s just me, I have come to realise that I need a LOT more bus wiring. Three times as much in fact and I’m not sure it is worth it? 

[Ron Ron Ron]

3 hours ago, IRC said:

…….. I have come to realise that I need a LOT more bus wiring. Three times as much in fact and I’m not sure it is worth it? 

I don’t know about your example, but generally speaking, it doesn’t necessarily follow that it would require that amount of extra wiring.

You can be imaginative in how you divide your layout into Power Districts and how you route the track bus wiring.

The idea that you must run multiple tracks of bus wire to be able to adequately feed all sections of rail, is not correct.

While you can route the track bus wires to follow the rails, you can also use branches and spurs, or root and branch, or combinations of all types of bus wire routing.

That opens up the scope to be a bit creative and minimise the amount of wire needed to feed all the rails in a Power District.

 

How you divide the layout into separate Power Districts, can also have bearing on how much wire will be needed.

 

 

.

[wagonbasher]

I am starting a layout that is a round house, so lots of locos sitting there with one at a time moving.  I’m not really into the sound and lights will add anything like that as sort of remote atmospherics.  
 

there is a ‘way in’ and a turntable but the rest are effectively sidings.

 

My DCC controller is a basic NCE Power cab and that has been ok for a 2 loco layout.

 

I’ve seen it quoted that they can run 4 or 6 trains.

 

The shed will have capacity for about 15 locomotives although the shed doesn’t need to be full and the turntable itself may be controlled

 

so..  three questions and I promise one does relate to the threads topic.

 

given that the locos won’t make a sound, won’t have lights flickering etc can I really have  more than 6 locos?

 

Would I split the shed into a couple of separately powered districts.  Hard wired feeds so the feed could be switched to power the ‘way in’, turntable and half the sidings, switch it and power the ‘way in’,  turntable and the other half.

 

or, am I overthinking this and I just need bite the bullet and buy the 5 amp NCE booster.

 

Please be gentle with me, I’m a DCC rookie

 

Andy

[Nigelcliffe]

2 minutes ago, wagonbasher said:

......

 

My DCC controller is a basic NCE Power cab and that has been ok for a 2 loco layout.

 

I’ve seen it quoted that they can run 4 or 6 trains.

 

The shed will have capacity for about 15 locomotives although the shed doesn’t need to be full and the turntable itself may be controlled

 

so..  three questions and I promise one does relate to the threads topic.

 

given that the locos won’t make a sound, won’t have lights flickering etc can I really have  more than 6 locos?

 

Would I split the shed into a couple of separately powered districts.  Hard wired feeds so the feed could be switched to power the ‘way in’, turntable and half the sidings, switch it and power the ‘way in’,  turntable and the other half.

 

or, am I overthinking this and I just need bite the bullet and buy the 5 amp NCE booster.

 

Your PowerCab can operate up to six locos simultaneously (if you've enough finger dexterity to keep jumping from loco to loco to adjust the control of each), from an arbitrarily large number of possible locos sitting and not being controlled.  The limit on parked-up locos is "current" from the system.   
The system can deliver around 2.5Amps maximum (depends on the power supply fitted, some UK dealers used to ship with a lower current power supply).    How much a moving loco requires depends on the loco, generally its less than 0.5A in OO locos, though there are a few (notably some Heljan designs) which are above 1A.  

 

A stationary and silent loco draws a few tens of milli-amps (at most) to keep the decoder running.  So, the impact of 15 stationary, silent locos will be near not enough to trouble the system.  

 

So, your system will just work as is, and no need for additional expense or complexity.    

 

 

[wagonbasher]

19 minutes ago, Nigelcliffe said:

 

Your PowerCab can operate up to six locos simultaneously (if you've enough finger dexterity to keep jumping from loco to loco to adjust the control of each), from an arbitrarily large number of possible locos sitting and not being controlled.  The limit on parked-up locos is "current" from the system.   
The system can deliver around 2.5Amps maximum (depends on the power supply fitted, some UK dealers used to ship with a lower current power supply).    How much a moving loco requires depends on the loco, generally its less than 0.5A in OO locos, though there are a few (notably some Heljan designs) which are above 1A.  

 

A stationary and silent loco draws a few tens of milli-amps (at most) to keep the decoder running.  So, the impact of 15 stationary, silent locos will be near not enough to trouble the system.  

 

So, your system will just work as is, and no need for additional expense or complexity.    

 

 

A perfect answer, thank you.

 

Andy

[NIK]

Hi Just an addition to what Nigel has said.

 

An NCE Power Cab allows up to 12 locos with different DCC addresses to be moving at the same time.

 

Of those 12 six will be just doing their own thing most of the time.

 

So for example if someone had a layout with six continuous runs and they had trains on each and each was double headed with the pairs of locos having the same DCC address.

 

Then the NCE Power Cab (current permitting) could set 6 x 2 = 12 locos running and still be able to control up to six elsewhere on the layout.

 

Also a few DCC decoders have a shuttle mode so they just need to be given a maximum speed by any DCC command station and they can be left to run on their own (using control from very simple ABC modules). So that allows another use - not a continuous run necessarily - could be an end to end 'branch'. 

 

Regards

 

Nick

Edited June 1 by NIK