General > General Discussion
Lots of DCC vs RailPro Questions from Mustdecide
KPack:
The quality of sound is improving but will take quite a while to reach where Loksound is at. Ring Engineering is a small outfit and lately have been spending much of their time on hardware tweaks and R&D for future products. That doesn't leave a lot of time to record new sounds and edit them for use (which is extremely time-consuming). But yes, eventually it will reach the point of the best that DCC has to offer. Is the sound bad now? No. Some sounds are better than others, but most are passable for the time being.
Battery life is a non-issue. As Bill said you can run your HC for somewhere around 8 hours before it shuts off. That is a VERY long time. Charging it without fully discharging will probably be fine for what you need...that's what I do. The battery meter will be more correct if the HC is fully discharged first, but again how often will you operate 8+ hours without stopping?
Based on your layout size you'll probably be fine with a single PWR-56 power supply placed in the middle with a bus going in both directions. You won't have enough locos running at the same time to overwhelm that power supply. I think the estimated limit was something like 25 locos with sound depending on their current draw.
You asked earlier about signaling. That involves setting up a network of signals to control train traffic. It can be simple or complicated....getting to the point where everything is signaled automatically based on where a train is and controlled from a central computer. With the layout size you are looking at signaling is probably not going to be an option. I know Alan is doing it on his layout with Railpro but he is also designing a lot of his own electronics to make it work the way he wants. And his layout is relatively large, making signaling possible.
As other people said what you go with really depends on what you are looking for. Railpro is easy to use and takes a lot of the tedious misery out of setting up and running trains. If you plan on running multiple units in a consist then RP is really the only way to go. There are a lot of really good things about DCC, and a lot of people really enjoy using it or at least tolerate it. I've used DCC but once I switched to RP I will never go back.
-Kevin
Alan:
I have charged my HC from various levels of discharge without noticing any detrimental effects.
Power supply choice should be based on total number of operating trains at any given time. Power bus wire gauge would be determined by layout size (wire run length). A 5 amp power supply with 12 - 14 gauge track bus should be more than adequate for a railroad of your size. As a safe rule of thumb consider 1/2 amp for each loco. That will allow ample headroom as seldom will any recently manufactured locomotive draw that much current. Also, never run a power supply at 100% rated load. 70-80% max continuous is better for power supply longevity. For reference my Atlas locos under moderate load draw about 100 mA. A 5 amp supply running at 80% would in theory operate 40 of these.
Try to place your power supply near the midpoint of the track bus wire run. By doing so you will minimize voltage drop from the wiring and somewhat improve voltage regulation as the load varies.
Ring sells a 5A power supply that also acts as a signal repeater not that your layout is so large as to need signal boosting. Just FYI.
Alan:
I must have been typing at the same time Kevin was. Nice to see we agree!
G8B4Life:
I can't really add anything over what Kevin said but maybe I can expand it a little.
On the batteries, you'll get longer service life (years of life) if you keep them as fully charged as possible. This goes for all rechargeable batteries really, though in reality we know that doesn't happen with many of our battery powered consumer electronics (who puts their mobile phone on charge each night? no one I know of). In fact the best way to destroy rechargeable batteries is to leave them discharged, so no, it's no problem to charge them after each decent session. I probably wouldn't charge it after using it for something like only 20 minutes of running trains from fully charged though.
As Kevin said, the PWR-56 should power your layout just fine. The pc power supplies could be used but by only putting out ~12v you'd be forever getting a low track voltage warning, plus you'd need to ensure you had breakers in line; pc power supplies can put out nearly 20A on the 12v rails which is a lot of welding power in a short circuit.
- Tim
yvesmary:
Hi MustDecide,
Speed Matching.
That's what sold me on RailPro, the utter simplicity of consisting any locomotives. No more of those confounded CV's. I can live with the available sounds.
If sound is your primary interest and you're willing to spend hours trying to speed match each and every loco to each other then you need DCC.
Yves in Alberta
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