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Ive been out of model railraoding for quite some time, & im looking to get back in.
But ive seen engines that are listed as DC & DCC.
What is the difference in these?
DCC: Digital Command Control, using a digital signal on the rails, you can control locos and other devices from a handheld/command center. You will essentially be controlling the engines, not the track as with dc. You can run locos on the same track, going in the same or different directions, without worries of polarity (with the exception of the common reverse loop, which can be now controlled with a dcc component).
Some locos are dcc ready, meaning the motor is insulated from the chassis. Some locos have to be made dcc ready, such as Athearn Blue Box engines. Some locos have dcc decoders already installed, and some of them have sound.
It's all in the power source.
DC is what you may remember from the old days where your trains ran from a good old DC power pack, and if you wanted to run more then one train at a time you set up "blocks" (power blocks) and turned them on and off as trains moved through them using electrical switches.
DCC supplies power to all of the rails all the time. There is a decoder chip in each loco that you use your controller to dial up the address of the chip (the address is usually the same as the loco number once you set it up) and then you control the train like that.
DC makes it so that if you are running a loco and you enter another trains block, both trains are now controlled by one controller. If one train stops, the other stops.
DCC allows fully independent control of each train all the time. You can actually have cornfield meets where each train is fully and independently controlled right up to where they touch couplers.
Think of it this way......with DC you drive switches (electrical switches). With DCC you drive trains!
EDIT: Darn, you beat me to it Thoroughbreed!
Awsome, thanks for the replys. Id say DCC is the way to go. Im pretty much just gathering up everything i can now, so i can get started once i get moed into a bigger house. Wont be till next year though.
thanks for the info.
Awsome, thanks for the replys. Id say DCC is the way to go. Im pretty much just gathering up everything i can now, so i can get started once i get moed into a bigger house. Wont be till next year though.
Since 1979 command control has been the way to go, it just took most model railroaders 20 years to realize it. Setting a standard in 1993 certainly helped.
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