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hi from stockport


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Welcome to the forum Pete - glad we finally managed to get you past the IP blocker!

Great time of the year to be starting out in the garden, especially if the past few days are anything to go by. 'Basic' double track is a good idea to begin with and there should be no problems using DCC outdoors. If you've been keeping up with topics on the forum then I'm sure you'll have learned that the baseboards should be your primary concern. If you get that right then there shouldn't be any problems to contend with other than the weather. At the moment one of the main topics of conversation has been on the use of 'rubbercrete' as a track base so I would suggest finding out more before and deciding if that would be right for you depending on your plans. Are you thinking of an elevated track or one closer to the ground? Obviously something like rubbercrete would be more suitable for a ground level layout rather than one raised off the ground.

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Welcome from Wakefield Pete. Try and take time to read through the forum, especially the Members Garden Railways section, you'll find lots of tips and ideas in there.

Good luck with building your railway and don't forget to post lots of photos as you proceed. :)

Ian R

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Hi Pete.

Are you thinking DCC just to move trains, or are you going to use other aspects of Command and Control.

From a moving trains point of view, my only advice is that you will have to bond your track. Either use a DCC bus and droppers to every length of rail, or solder bonds between every rail. I wrote a guide on this a few years ago.

If you are planning on using DCC to control points outside then you've come the right place. Between us we have developed a very nice solution which uses servos from car door locks and a particular DCC Accessory Decoder. I have 16 points outside which are controlled with this system. Or I will have when I finish wiring up the last 5 of them this evening.

For me the really cool bit of DCC in the garden is controlling trains and routes using iPhones and iPads. I'm happy to offer advice if you are thinking about doing that.

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Another advantage of DCC which I discovered last week, is that some of the better decoders can be fitted with "Stay Alive" capacitors. I had three locos fitted with Zimo sound decoders by Digitrains of Lincoln. The "Stay Alive", stores energy, so that if the loco loses contact due to dirty track, the running (and sound effect) carries on for some seconds. Smooth running is dramatically improved. One loco which was removed from the track without turning off the sound effect, was still hissing "steam" when it was being put away in its box.

Another amazing feature of these decoders is "Smart Stop" which means that the loco will always stop on a clean piece of track, so that it will re-start without any problem. It is often claimed that DCC will not improve a poor running DC loco but actually, that is not always true.

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