Andy: Congratulations on considering going to 2 rail. It sounds like you are like a lot of us…While you can make a spectacular layout in 3 rail and many have!, if you just can’t get past that center raiI, the bigger wheels and/or the huge couplers, then 2 rail is a mus
You are getting a lot of advice to go to DCC, and I am not going to even try and talk you out of it, particularly with your desire to have one system for both your HO and future O scale system. But I’d like to point out that DCS /TMCC is a perfectly valid approach
I have a modest size (31 x 20 foot layout) which is controlled by DCS, While all but one of my locomotives run on DCS, I actually have very few MTH locomotives. To get the PS3 “decoder” I buy the least expensive MTH RailKing Locomotive that has the sound set I want. The DCS system is the same between the Railking and Premier lines. I pull the DCS system and then sell the RK loco. My net cost is usually about $100.00 for a PS3 system
I also have TMCC to control one locomotive that I did not want to convert to DCS. A set of Lionel Legacy Sharks, which really liked the sound set. TMCC and DCS are entirely compatable.
I "test drove" several types of control systems, manyof which are discussed, here before choosing DCS. I did so for a number of reasons, such as I like the feedback and the simple display on the handheld that saves me the trouble of remembering anything. But for me, the biggest advantage is I run heavy Pennsy Electrics, and DCS has by far and away the largest number of appropriate sounds
