@PeterB posted:These are really useful responses, and I thank you. I didn't put an email in my profile, as @Alan Mancus pointed out -- that was an oversight on my part. A couple people observed, correctly, that my initial question seemed to ask more than the original features of command control offer, while others pointed out that SBC*'s offer a lot more options. One epiphany I had while reading these responses, Lionel's manual for Legacy Control, and third party blogs, is that I don't want more than the original hardware/software offer. Or, at least, not yet. If neither the technology nor the paradigm for command control, be it TMCC, Legacy, or DCC (which I incorrectly referred to as DCC in my first post), have changed, it may be that they do so much and do it well enough that a change is not actually needed? That may be a myopic outlook, but I'd love to set up a Legacy system out of the box before I go looking for more functionality. Okay, why haven't I? Probably because the price of a new Legacy set is akin to a weekend in New York, and I love my travel as much as I love my trains. This brings me to my final question in this thread (for the moment, at least):
Does Legacy or DC lend itself to a scenario where I can address the engines, but the layouts change with a high level of dynamism (ie, I put up a new layout, and break it down a week later, start all over again)? Or do these systems depend on a static layout?
Both systems (DCS and Legacy) in theory were designed for easy use but there are wrinkles on that. DCS sends its commands through the middle (power) rail, and there are limitations with that. With DCS, on a layout outside a small one you need 'power districts' isolated from each other (basically it is like setting up block wiring, without the block switches!). The reason is there are limitations to the DCS signal and of course voltage drops (with DCS, the power to the rail is the same wire that delivers the DCS signal, the TIU output is delivering the power+signal.) Because of interference, you can only have 1 DCS feed per district/block the blocks/districts need to be below a certain length (in standard block wiring, you could have multiple feeders into a block, to ensure consistent voltage. )
TMCC/Legacy delivers its signal 'over the air', it uses the house ground wiring as an antenna. The only connection legacy/tmcc has with the track is it connects to the ground side of the rails. It has its own quirks with signal strength and the like.
Thus is you rebuilt a layout for TMCC/Legacy, it literally is 1 wire (it was designed to be easily retroffited to an existing layout from what I recall has been said). DCS isn't difficult, you simply would have to have power districts in the new layout, but if you already had DCS on the old layout it shouldn't be a big deal, it basically is isolating the middle rail at the end of each section.
