Mike,
You sound as negative as I was about DCC once upon a time. Frankly, as far as N scale is concerned, with all the engines I had in the stable, I never would have gone DCC. Too much expense to convert. And the fact that steam, which was most of my stable, was hard to convert, also influenced that opinion. You are probably in that position now.
This was one of the big reasons I went to the larger scale. That and the ability to have sound too. Now I am a happy man. I can't begin to tell you what a kick it is to hear the engine start up, the light generator wind up, etc. and then chug around the layout. There is a variety of sound that emanates from these little beasts that boggles the mind.
Now I must say that the system Dave has is 1st generation and MRC has produced a newer system which is supposed to be better. Unfortunately, Dave can not upgrade his system by adding components or plugging in improvement modules. This is why I went for the Corvette instead of the Corsica. My system is very easily upgraded, as in I am waiting for the module to plug into it right now from the mfg. This is cheaper than buying a whole new system.
Now I must ramble on here a bit and say something about track cleaning. I have found that the DCC is no less or more sensitive to dirty track. Maybe it is the fact that I have so many feeders from the bus wires and that the bus wires are of a large size, that I have little trouble, actually none, with pick-up from the tracks. Now I realize that I am in a larger scale and that the "footprint" of the wheel tread is larger and provides a greater area for track contact, but you must realize that when in N scale, I had no pick-up problems either. And here is the kicker. I am using the same bus wire and feeders to the O scale that I used to the N scale. I just cut them off under the layout surface and re-soldered them to the new On30 track where ever they fell. 14 gage bus and 18 gage feeders. Both N and On30 scale.
I will attribute this to several things. 1. I ran trains every day. Even if only to make one circuit around the layout to cover all the track. 2. I ran an Aztec cleaning car at least once a week over the whole layout. 3. I ran A-Line track shiner pads on every caboose on every freight train that ran on the layout, therefore always "polishing" the rails with a piece of masonite. I was very remiss about cleaning the freight cars, but I did clean the passenger cars with regularity to keep the lights burning in them without flicker. I also cleaned the loco wheels at least once a month.
So, as usual I wrote too much here. If you find anything of interest in this epistle, you are welcome.
B-) & :x
