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Thanks to Bill Barger for getting this topic started

DCC's advantage over analog operations comes through your ability to control individual locomotives without any complicated switches and wiring. This advantage can come as early as your decision to purchase your second engine. Contrary to some thought, serious consideration of DCC operation needs to start at the beginning stages of Model Railroading.

In the analog environment, no matter how much you grow your power availability, all you ever control is the track. It either has power on it, or not. With DCC, you control the engines - ie you drive the train!! You control the speed, the direction, whether or not the lights are on, and, potentially additional lighting effects, or sound effects. You can put additional trains on the tracks without having to worry about extra wiring, switches, or power supplies. You do this with multiple engines on any track you want, even on the same track as other locomotives.

With the availability of production engines with DCC decoders installed, we encourage model railroaders to consider going with DCC at a very early point in your Model Railroading experience. By the time you have your monster layout built, and a stable of 50 or more engines, it's a daunting consideration to adapt all those engines to DCC. Not impossible, but certainly a big challenge and big expense. In reality, a few good engines, DCC equipped, will cost less in the long run than the great accumulation of engines we frequently have sitting around, with no ability to run them.

[edit] Who Benefits using DCC?

Everyone! Everybody can benefit from using DCC, over DC, regardless of how large or how small their layout is. Here are some benefits:

• First and foremost, the main reason for DCC is the realistic operations attained by greater control over your train. No longer do you control the tracks, making sure other locomotives aren't on the same block, or flipping switches to direct power around the track. The realistic operations comes from the ability to slow your train to a crawl, and keep it there. There is also smooth acceleration throughout the range of locomotive speeds.

• Next, but not any less important, your DCC system will not become obsolete if the manufacturer of your DCC system goes out of business. This is because your DCC runs on a standard, and as such, you can use other equipment (primarily boosters and decoders). You can use any DCC command station with any decoder, and everything will work just fine.

• As we mentioned earlier, a major benefit of DCC is having greater control of your trains. All systems have a basic 14 speed step control, that is, your can control your train speed in 14 steps. More common in this day and age, most DCC systems allow you to control your trains at 28 and 128 step, or speeds. Many of them have modifiable speed curve as well as programmable momentum and break. But, if that isn't adequate, the newer systems have 28 speed steps with the same programmability.
  • With 128 speed steps, you'll be able to make your locomotive crawl at a snails pace - you won't even know they are moving unless you are watching closely.

• Turnouts can be controlled from your hand-held throttle. So, no more multiple switches all over the place, you can access everything from a single device. Alternatively, you can connect a computer for control, if you wish. And there are currently several companies coming out with incredible sound systems. Because they are DCC-compatible, it will make no difference which DCC-compatible system you have, you will be able to choose from any of the companies that produce these sound systems.

• DCC also has built in directional constant lighting with the use of decoder functions. You can also control ditch lights, cab lights, mars lights, or anything else you can imagine...even animation. Of course, there are different advantages for different scales, but they all have those we've mentioned so far - and much more.

[edit] Small Layouts

On smaller layouts, it generally too difficult to operate two trains at once since the electrical blocks have to be really small. You end up having to toggle switches every five to ten feet; which is simply no fun.

However, with DCC there are no required electrical blocks, except if you want detection blocks for automation and animation. If your layout has a mainline, switch yard, industrial section, and/or bypass, DCC will allow you to run one train while a friend runs another; both on the same electrical block. Imagine how easy this becomes - no more cab control. As a side benefit, you'll get to enjoy your trains with a friend - the two best things in the world, in our humble opinion.

[edit] Medium-Sized Layouts

[edit] Large Layouts

Large layouts benefit from simpler wiring. A lot of extra wires, and switches, not to mention other things needed for smooth operation, are eliminated with DCC. DCC can use their version of "blocks", in this instance called a power district, to aid in routing power and minimizing interruptions caused by short circuits.

The advantage comes from simple implementation, which reduces costs and time needed to wire everything. Another advantage is that the simpler wiring scheme reduces the chance of mistakes, and speeds up troubleshooting.

A typical DC layout uses a number of small, low current DC power supplies located around the layout. The larger the layout, the larger the number of power supplies. A DCC system can eliminate all of them with one command station/booster, or use a few boosters as needed.

[edit] Comparing analog to DCC power

Before we get too deeply into DCC, we should discuss the differences between analog and DCC. In brief, DCC allows you to control your trains and not your tracks. DCC allows you to control multiple trains at the same time, while avoiding the complex wiring and block assignments of analog operation.

[edit] Analog Power

For standard analog controls, the ‘throttle’ or 'power pack' puts a variable voltage on the track. The locomotive's motors and headlights are directly connected to the track through the wheels. This is how the speed and direction of the locomotive is controlled - more voltage, more speed. Reverse the DC polarity and the locomotive changes direction. The brightness of the headlight depends on the voltage, but regular lights don't care about polarity - only LED's do.

Don't confuse amperes (amps) with voltage (volts). Here is a simple analogy comparing water to power. The water pressure, or how fast the water comes out of a faucet, could be compared to voltage. The more pressure, voltage, the faster water comes out. If you have a small water pipe, you cannot get a high rate of water flow, or current. The wider the water pipe, or electrical wire, the more water, or current (amperes), can go through.

What does this have to do with trains? Electrical current (amps) flows out of the analog 'throttle', to the track feeder wires, which are connected to the rails. The power then courses through the train's wheels, lights the headlight, turns the motor, and the train moves.

[edit] DCC Power

With DCC, the booster puts a constant voltage on the track. This means all locomotives have power to their wheels, all the time. Instead of the voltage level controlling the trains, a receiver (decoder) inside each locomotive listens for commands sent out over the rails from the command station. These commands tell the decoder to make the train for go forward, reverse, fast, slow, or turn on/off lights or sounds. Each locomotive responds only to commands specifically addressed to it, and ignores all others.

With this setup, you control the trains, and not the track as with analog. Because of this, DCC is able to control multiple trains on the same track without having to deal with complex wiring to isolate each section of track to control each train.

For further details, you can read more about throttles, command stations, boosters, and decoders.

[edit] Wiring differences

If you have an existing layout and are converting from analog to DCC, and if you are NOT using common rail wiring, you can simply install a DCC system in place of one of the cab throttles and set all blocks to be controlled by that cab, so that all track power is connected to the DCC output. This allows you to use your pre-existing wires to setup a DCC system. The power load is shared among the smaller feeder wires from the preexisting system. You MUST be using a wiring plan that gaps both rails of the track, which requires feed wires to both rails from the block selector switches.

For a new layout, you need to be aware that all locomotive power comes from the track and more than one locomotive may be running in any given area at once. DCC boosters (and their power supplies) are designed to have current ratings of 2.5 to 10 amps. Traditional analog power packs are meant to run only one train at a time so they are designed to supply only 1 or 2 amps. However, because DCC locos and their ampere demand may be located anywhere on the layout wiring to the track for DCC needs to be designed to handle a higher number of amps. DCC layouts also tend to have more locomotives on the layout at once, and to run more locomotives at a time than analog layouts. Why? Because it's possible!

For all the locomotives to run properly, you need to be sure that there are no voltage sags. That is, you need to be sure that all sections of track have sufficent power to handle highest anticipated load, and that the DCC voltage doesn't drop below 10 volts on the track - the point at which the DCC signal begins to become unstable. The best way to do this is to scatter feeder wire connections around the layout - for outdoor railways, about every 6 to 9 feet is recommended. A second reason for a more robust wiring system is to ensure that the over current protective devices built into the DCC booster will operate correctly. This is necessary to protect your railroad equipment from damage caused by an accidental electrical problem, such as derailments. With simple analog control the relatively small power packs are limited to 12 volts times 1 or 2 amps, or about 12 or 24 watts of power. Since you are probably operating only one train at a time, it is relatively easy to observe that the train stops when a derailment causes an electrical problem, and turn off the throttle while fixing it.

With DCC, a booster can supply 12 volts (or as high as 18 volts for larger scales) at 5, 8 or even 10 amps into a track short circuit without becoming overloaded. That represents perhaps 60+ continuous watts. This current can quickly melt trucks, engines, or let the "Magic Smoke" out of decoders. To help prevent this, DCC systems have short circuit protection built into the booster. When it detects this event, the booster will shutdown for a short period of time. Once the short has been removed from the track, the booster will automatically turn the power back on.

For this to work, any point on the track needs to be wired so that the full power of the booster can pass through it, triggering the booster's short circuit protection. This usually means heaver, larger wire, better track connections, and more track feeders. To test the performance of the layout wiring, simply place a coin or other conductive metal object across the rails. The booster should shut off the track power automatically and turn it back on once the short has been removed. See the track wiring page for more details.

[edit] Starter Sets & Power Supplies

A typical starter train set comes with a tiny analog power supply--literally a throw away item due to it's rudimentary controls, limited power availability, etc. As this initial power supply is only good for only powering one engine on a small loop of track, any advancement past this starter stage requires a more advanced and expensive power supply--and provides an ideal opportunity to investigate the advantages of DCC. More advanced power supplies can certainly be purchased, and they will cost substantially less than an entry level DCC system. However continued growth of the layout will require more power supplies, more electrical switches, more wiring, etc.

[edit] DCC System considerations

• Power, the ability expressed in amps, to run the engines you desire to operate.
• Engine Addresses or slots--system limitations on how many addresses are available.
  • As each engine will occupy an address or slot, this has a direct relationship to how many engines the system can operate at one time.
• Expandability--railroads grow, # of engines GROW--can your system GROW ALSO?
• Analog operation capable? Some DCC systems have the ability to run analog engines (engines without a decoder) on DCC powered rails. This can be a great option, affording you the chance to run newly purchased engines, or visiting engines, without having to first install a decoder.

[edit] Cost

A common argument against DCC is cost. Some claim that DCC is way too expensive, and then back it up with a large figure they claim represents the cost of going to DCC.

But the truth is a little more complex.

Both DC and DCC will probably cost about the same in the end. The difference is when those costs come into play. DCC typically has a large front end cost in terms of the equipment. Once the initial investment is made, the cost goes down.

Whereas with DC, the cost is spread over time. But all those toggle switches and extra wire, that isn't free either. Just not as noticeable.

Starter Sets for DCC range from those that cost no more than a decent DC powerpack/throttle, to expensive feature laden sets. The advantage lies with the fact that you can decide how simple or complex system you want to begin with, and there may even be an upgrade path. But it is easy to use, because you don't have the overhead needed by DC for complex operations.

With DC, the additional wiring and switches add complexity, from an operational and technical standpoint. Operators unfamiliar with your system will have trouble operating a train. The additional wiring and switches also introduce problems, more complexity, more problems.

Ultimately, it is your choice. But don't let people throwing around big numbers scare you. The question is, what do you want to do? DC may be appropriate in one case, but a limitation in another. Act accordingly.

[edit] See also

1. DCC versus Radio Control - See comparion of R/C (non-DCC) to DCC control