adamcooke

What does it do?

Hi there, I'm looking at using PECO Streamline Code 75 track and I'm wondering about track spacing when combined with points with crossovers. With the streamline the centre-to-centre distance is 50mm whereas with the Setrack (and Hornby) it's 67mm. I don't have many trains yet so I don't have a good enough collection to do some real world tests with different sized trains and engines to determine the best spacing between tracks on various curves. Does anyone have a suggestion on the best size to go for between tracks? I'm not looking at a huge layout here so the trains aren't going to be massive the radius of the curve won't be less than a Hornby 2nd radius (438mm). I'd prefer the larger gap (67mm) but not quite sure on the best way to achieve this using the Streamline points. Any idea there? Thanks in advance for any tips! Adam

Do you know of a good list of recommended options for this?

I've just spotted I've put this in the wrong place - sorry! Please feel free to move it into Help & Questions.

Hi all, I’m relatively new to DCC (and model railways entirely) and I’m trying to make some decisions about the technology that I should be looking to use for a new layout. I know what I want to achieve and I’m familiar with various options to achieve it but my understanding some some concepts is lacking. I hope you don’t mind me just asking a few, what might be obvious, questions. I have done some research into these things too. My layout will contain a couple of loops and a few sidings, controlled by points (with point motors and decoders). I’d like to have appropriate signalling with blocking on previous signals. I’d like to control everything from a PC. The layout will have numerous static LEDs, LFX controllers, sound decoders etc... for non-train elements - house lights, fires, station announcements etc... It would be nice if these were controlled by DCC too so they could start/stop/change when trains pass. The layout should run automatically on a program (or manually controlled when needed) with trains stopping at stations and red lights and changing direction at the end of non-looped track. Firstly, I suppose, I need to know what software is best used for controlling and automating all this? JRMI? Rail master? RR&Co? Can these packages handle a completely automated program? Secondly, what DCC “controller” is best which provides a USB or Ethernet interface for a PC? ELink? Signatrak? Prodigy? I’ve heard ELink doesn’t work well with JRMI (although the Hornby Elite does). Finally, for now, on the track/block detection, do I need to use Loconet to interface with that? Can you do detection without Loconet? If so, what software supports this? I haven’t been able to find out much about this which makes total sense to me yet. I understand there’s block detection (any train in an area of track?) and track detection (any train at a specific point?). I’m sure I’ll have other questions but I have no idea what they are yet! Many thanks for any help! Adam