I was not going to add to the complexity of this thread and then had second thoughts. PRRJIM is talking about manual switches. If you want to be glued to a bank of switches and not be able to move around your layout as your consist moves along then by all means use manual switches and save yourself a great deal of money. But if you like to follow your consist and you already have the Remote in your hand, consider using the Lionel Block Power Controllers that can turn your blocks on and off or switch them from one Power Master to your other Power Master. Word of Warning: Although I have never seen a definitive statement to this, there appears to be a definite difference between the older BPC and the newer BPC2. In that the newer BPC2 appears to just be an on/off switch. By my reading, I cannot figure out how the BPC2 can switch between two or more Power Masters. This caveat would only be of interest to you if you were running Conventional and Command simultaneously, but of course not trying to do it in the same block which is impossible.
My $.02.
