Just this week I took my older (pre Rev L) TIU to the club's layout to try out DCS for the first time. The layout was built with no consideration for future DCS use (much to my chagrin) and uses a bus as it is quite large at 25' x 42' with 5 loops. I hooked up the TIU in passive mode (a first for me) with alligator clips to the rails of a siding expecting the worse.
Much to my surprise, the locomotive started right up and seemed to have a solid connection as I ran it around one end of the outer loop - about 150' in each direction. We were doing some switch work adding Tortoise machines so part of the main line was closed down. Granted, I wasn't able to test all the track in the brief time I was there but I'm surprised and optimistic that we will have decent connection going forward.
Only two of us run MTH at present but one of the 'other' fellas has ordered a RK engine...
