Sold the house, layout and the Rail Pro system with it. Due to medical issues I have been away from model railroading these past few weeks, just on the forums. No place or energy to run trains.
This evening I went to the home of a hobby shop friend who had asked if I felt up to running a few trains? Answer was yes. I took a non decoder but DCC ready Kato SD40 over as its an easy install. Friend opened up the engine dropped the LOCSound decoder in and attached to the iphone 4 speaker already installed. The sound was awesome as was the running on the program track.
A few minutes with the easy to use NCE Procab and off and running we went for awhile. I asked to consist one of his engines with mine. He took both engines to programing track to consist them. He must have fiddled with those things for 45 minutes before saying, sometimes engines just do not consist. I said no problem (he-he) I'll just run mine on his beautiful switching area.
He played maybe another 1/2 hour while I ran one of his consists around the layout, loksound creates awesome music to diesel lovers. Never got to run my train again this evening. He said the CV's all needed to be adjusted. Told him I appreciated the time and in a couple months he will need to visit my new space and layout.
I have been contemplating not returning to Rail Pro and going with NCE which to use is a very nice system. After watching what he went through to get one engine coded to run and the difficulty of consisting engines, no freaking way.
I will be ordering another Rail Pro system to go along with the experiment that will be dead rail using the 2 new boards from BlueRail Trains I have received.
He only has 5 locomotives on his NCE system which is 3 ProCabs all tied to fascia plugs. I took him to the RailPro site and the videos there. Told him to wait on any more purchases until he tries Rail Pro on my layout. I can't wait for my track to arrive as the benchwork is up, so tomorrow will be applying the 2" foam to the benchwork and ordering a new system. I say the only real improvement needed to Rail Pro is the sounds, Loksound truly was beautiful to listen to.
Every difficult to program issue I've heard about DCC came forth this evening. I was only able to use Rail Pro for a couple months before the house sale was finalized. They asked for the layout for the 12yr old son. I took 4 locomotives that were still DC but DCC ready with me.
The 3 engines left behind were all DCC ready, A Kato, Athearn Genisis and finally an INtermountain. The Rail Pro module while a little big still was an easy fit and the sound attached to Iphone 4 speaks (thanks Bill B for your blog on that) was good. I don't think it took any more than 10 minutes including the 1st one. Preaching to the choir I know, but consisting was so easy.
I'm coming back to Rail Pro
TomO
