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and I've not heard ONE instance of someone blowing a properly installed DCC decoder just by running it on analog track power. In fact, decoders are SPECIFICALLY designed to allow running on analog. If a decoder blew when you put it on an analog track, it would have blown in DCC too, because it wasn't installed properly.
And now you have just heard of one.
The blown decoder in question was a low quality decoder in the first place, a Bachmann Modern 4-4-0. It was fine on DCC. Smoked it on DC. Who knows, someday when I'm feeling like I need new skills, I'll rebuild the board. All I know is, you won't smoke a component worth more then 50 cents on raw DC with just a motor in the chassis. You may smoke a bulb now and then if you forget a resistor. With DCC, you have the price of the board at risk until you fire it up and everything checks out good.
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An hour? Probably closer to 5 minutes... or less. You see, that pair of FP-7s (and, in fact, most locomotives that are of new manufacture) probably is designed with DCC in mind. In N scale, most everything with a light board has a drop-in decoder replacement available. Installation time is less than 5 minutes and can be done with nothing but a single screwdriver.
Are you aware of what locomotives I'm are talking about?
These are yellow box Atlas-Austria FP-7s, they were built before DCC was ever even envisioned. I know what it takes to install DCC in these locomotives correctly, it will take about an hour when all is said and done. To run on DC, all I have to do is open the box and throw it on the track. Done. The others are locomotives elitists wouldn't even consider "model trains," those old things made before modern manufacture. Yes, I threw that term out there, but I'm specifically talking about the bachmann-tyco-lifelike-mantua-roco-fleischmann-athearn-bowser-varney-brass out there that was designed before the 1990s without decoder sockets or even circuit boards. It Runs if you give it the juice. if it runs, the railroad is complete.
Mind you, these FP-7s will run very well on DCC, if and when I get around to dropping decoders into them. They have nice hefty can motors in them and they weigh a ton. That being said, it costs me nothing in either money or TIME to enjoy them RIGHT NOW on my DC system.
There's a reason the DCC install takes longer, once you have it open, you want to get all the electronics done in that one shot. That way, you hopefully never have to open the locomotive back up again. Opening and closing locomotives is when most damage occurs, in my experience, it's not something one wants to do more than a couple times in the lifetime of the locomotive.
There's a LOT of this stuff still on the second hand market, tables and tables and tables of it. And it all runs on DC, no upgrades needed. Some of it runs pretty well, some of it runs poorly. When you have a pile of DC locomotives, you run each one for as long as you want until you get tired of it, take it off the track and put on the next, just like a record on a record player. It's not as fancy as the 100 disc CD changer, but then when your collection is a long shelf of old vinyl, well, what sense does a 100 disk CD changer make? It's the same principle with old DC locomotives. After running ten locomotives, a half hour has past and it's time to go to bed, or eat dinner, or do that other project that is a better investment of free time. That may even be building a structure, or a switch, or any of the million projects available within this hobby alone.
My latest purchase is an SD-7, gutted but it has the motor, for about $26.00 after shipping. That's 32.5% of the price of your decoder ALONE, never mind what you paid for your locomotive; I can get Three whole identical units for the price of your one decoder. If I was a family man with three kids, and my choice was between one locomotive with DCC and three locomotives with DC, guess which one makes more sense - this is not a trick question, unless you haven't ever raised multiple kids!
If I were to just run it DC with no care for lights, all I have to do is throw it on the track behind my $25 DC transformer [Athearn, my LHS] and it will go. Those FP-7s I mentioned earlier, I got the pair for $30. They run well.
Going back to those hypothetical kids, yes, the kids will still have to wait their turn to turn the layout, but when they do, they'll be able to run their very own locomotive, or they'll have a choice between three locomotives [if they can share].
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And if all you want to do is run one ordinary locomotive at a time, no control of lights, no control of sound, no possibility of expanded capabilities, then that's all you need. But that's NOT what DCC is meant for, and your comparison is apples to kumquats. Using DCC in THAT application is using a sledgehammer to crack an egg.
Exactly. If all you want to do is run one ordinary locomotive at a time, which is the most the average ordinary human being does in this hobby on their personal bedroom layout/4x8 [counting everybody, not just the rabid fans] DCC is using a sledgehammer to crack an egg. You have reiterated my point PRECISELY!!
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Take that same little roundy-round layout, and try THIS with analog...
Two trains, running half the layout apart on the single track main, in the same direction, each on a (unattended except in emergency) throttle. A third local (under your control), running the OPPOSITE direction on the same single-track main, making pickups and ducking into sidings to clear the main for approaching trains. (1)
Suddenly your roundy-round gets a LOT more interesting... but that scenario would be an operational nightmare under analog control.
The only difference... hooking up DCC.
Well, let's see, my mainline is 30' long. I like trains around 10' long. Tell me how I'm going to fit in train two, much less train three, while train one is running around on the main. This layout is a round the walls layout, mind you, but I didn't cram a whole bunch of track in my switching areas. It's a single track mainline, with two passing sidings, the second of which is only about 5 feet long. That short siding is for runaround moves and allowing short trains to sit in the hole.
If I have train 2 on the layout, it HAS to sit and wait until train one is back in the passing siding and then pulls out - there's something called safe following distance. There are simple electronic circuits that will automate this little action, including the throwing of the switches after each run.
My Egg is not big enough for your sledgehammer.
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And it's false economy, because it fails to compare on a basis of equal capability. You can buy a used Trabant, or a new Koenigsegg, but about the only thing they have in common is 4 wheels.
No, it is not, because that handful of switches and a power pack gets trains moving on that layout. If trains are moving, you're looking at about as far as the average runner goes, even if they switch, set out, and park locomotives between jobs. And to be honest, you're looking at the full scope of the operational hobby for many people, in the amount of time they have to play with it. This setup provides between a half hour and an hour of operating, where an operating session on my layout is defined as running every locomotive/train combination you wish at least once, while setting out cars and locomotives as one wishes. Yes, you're taking a lot of engines [and cars] on and off the track, but that's the reality of the 10'x10' room with a no man's land center. My layout capacity is literally perhaps 20 cars, maximum. Any more and it's a parking lot.
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Use what you want at home... but don't even pretend that you're making any kind of valid comparison between analog and DCC operations.
Don't even pretend for a moment that DCC is the model train hobby. The model train hobby is running trains. How you do it is a matter of economy versus functionality. DCC does it VERY well, but DCC is a sledgehammer. It does big jobs really really well. And it adds a ton of features, all very nice features we all WANT. That being said, it comes at a price. That price is not a trivial amount, either, it's enough money to eat for a month. We do not NEED DCC to enjoy the hobby, hence why there are so many home layouts that still use DC alone.
I'm doing my very best here to show you that there IS an envelope within which DC makes perfect sense, where DCC becomes a questionably expensive investment.