About the only thing to free you from in DCC wiring is the block system. Everything else, gaps, reversals in phase, etc must be wired the same way, or controlled manually/digitally the same way. So, you must gap rails, especially after power-routing turnouts, and you must gap the leg on a turning wye you intend to use for reversing, or gap both routes leaving a turnout that leads to a reversing loop.
If you decide to purchase an automatic reverser, at tip for you is to not have both gaps directly across from each other. That is, don't have them so that a carpenter's square laid against one rail would show the two gaps perfectly perpendicalar if the other side of the square were lined up with them. The idea is to stagger them for about 1/8" if possible which keeps the logic centre in the chip from doing weird things. Someone else can explain why in more detail, but I wanted to let you know that, at least in the case of Digitrax and their PSX-AR, they suggest you stagger the gaps by a wee bit.
Think of DCC as putting a tiny brain that listens into the decoder. It tells the motor what to do, not you and the throttle. So, unlike DC, where when you operate the throttle and the loco moves, in DCC when you operate the throttle the decoder tells the loco to move or to turn on lights. It will move regardless of the polarity to the rails because it converts the AC current to DC for the sake of the DC can motor. No blocks needed because the decoder reverses the pulses to control motor direction.
