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Railpro with DCC on Large Modular Layout

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drisdon:
This past weekend 18 people including myself setup a large 30 module Free-mo layout in a 34' x 70' space in Clovis, CA.  I used my Railpro system on the typical Digitrax equipped Free-mo layout and it was a great experience!  One of the biggest issues everyone experienced was dirty track and I initially thought there was something wrong with Railpro, but realized everyone had the same problem.  Now this issues is magnified when you don't have any sort of keep alive installed to get through the rough spots though and I hope this will be a future addition to Railpro.

Now for the fun stuff; everyone kept asking me what I was using, and I would tell them Railpro.  Most have never heard of it and many would say; "Oh, that's what that guy from Texas keeps pushing".  However many started to realize that I could run my trains without experiencing all the DCC issues they were all having.  I find it funny to watch people use wireless throttles and constantly plug them in with their short 18" cable because the wireless is not reliable enough to just run on it.  I lost count of the number of runaways when a locomotive takes off at full power, loss of consists, or one unit drops out of consist, slot and slot max issues, and other random Digitrax issues.

One person, who has been adamantly opposed in the past, was very intrigued and would like to purchase a Railpro to experiment with it.  Another whom developed the MSS signal system was also very intrigued as he had never heard anything about Railpro before.  Another person visiting from out of state was very interested as well, especially once I showed him how easy it was to consist and have locomotives run together without any speed matching.  The biggest complaint was that they have much $$$ tied up in DCC and it would be hard to switch.  I sold my Digitrax equipment to fund the purchase and I have no regrets in doing so.  I did save one Digitrax throttle and even brought a couple of DCC equipped locos, but never wanted to try and run them which I think tells me I'm done with DCC and just install Railpro in them too.

So, I just wanted to share the great experience with all of you that I had with Railpro on a large modular layout. 

Dan Risdon

G8B4Life:
I'm glad you had a great time using, and importantly, showing off RailPro. I think showing it off by using it (and letting them try it) is probably our best avenue to get it out there; there seems to be much stubbonness and animosity towards RailPro without people actually seeing it, usually from the DCC diehards that have a lot invested in DCC.

Sometimes it doesn't work though; I took my RailPro and a couple of loco's with me when I went to a friends hobby shop a couple of weeks ago as I told him I'd show it to him. He handed the HC back to me within 20 seconds of handing it to him without even turning it on. The loco's didn't even make it out of my bag. I guess some people just don't want to know what else there is out there.

- Tim

William Brillinger:
Thanks for sharing your story Dan!

Regarding a Keep Alive option for RailPro, Please email support@ringengineering.com and tell Tim you would like to see this option. The more people that ask for it, the sooner it will happen. (so says Tim.)

nodcc4me:
Good to hear of your experience Dan. Most of us have had similar ones.


RailPro, like DCC, is susceptible to stalling on dirty track. We are hoping that Ring is working on keep-alive circuitry, which should mostly eliminate that problem.

KPack:
Keep alive would be awesome.  I've asked Tim about it several times and I do believe he plans on making one.  Unfortunately he has other issues to deal with first and clear a backlog of projects and updates.

"Oh, that's what that guy from Texas keeps pushing".  Haha, are they talking about me?  I can't think of anyone else in Texas that used it when I was there.  I've since moved though, so maybe now it will be "that's what that guy from Washington keeps pushing".  I can't help it if I like the system and enjoy using it.  I got so tired of the disinformation, secondhand "facts", and speculation that I took it upon myself to answer questions and comments from the perspective of someone who actually uses Railpro.

Glad that you had a good experience running Railpro on the modular layout.  A month ago I ran at a semi-local club for the first time and answered a lot of questions about Railpro.  I let one of the guys play around with it for a while and run some switching ops with one of my locos.  The only issue was my locos are all equipped with Sergents and the clubs stuff was all Kadee, so they didn't play well together.  Besides that he had a blast using it.  I believe that putting the controller in someone's hand and letting them use the system is the best way to educate.  You can talk about it all you want, but until you've actually used Railpro yourself then you really aren't aware of what it's capable of.

-Kevin

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