1) Well, any future issues will deal with engines and DCS. Everything else on a layout can be any brand, that is it will work. I suspect that someone will come up with a way to adapt IF DCS goes away.
2) As most of us are seeing (or can see if you look) this hobby is shrinking. Most of the people you see at train swap meets/meetings have gray hair. There are very few young people interested. Somewhere in the future I suspect that most model RRing will be on computers.
