Digital Command Control – DCC for Your Model Railroad

Digital Command Control, or DCC as it is commonly known, is a clever way to control more than one locomotive on your model railroad and have them both doing different things.

In the past a power pack would provide a DC voltage to the track. By increasing or decreasing the voltage you would determine the speed of your locomotive. If you reversed the polarity of the DC voltage the locomotive would change direction.

However, if you had 2 locomotives on the same track they would both respond the same way. This wasn’t realistic and often the operation of the one train would get boring. Another issue was the voltage drop in some parts of the track.

A dodgy connection or a power pack that was under-powered would mean erratic operation of the locomotives.

The experienced model railroaders got around this by having different electrical sections of track. Locomotive 1 would run on section 1 while locomotive 2 ran on section 2. The clever use of toggle switches allowed each section to be switched on and off and the polarity reversed when required. This usually results in complicated wiring. Therefore, a good understanding of electrical flow is essential. Without good electrical knowledge, a simple short could mean many hours of problem solving and frustration.

For the model train beginner, using DC control is far too complicated.

Digital Command Control is the answer. It is a simple control and works by supplying a constant low voltage to the entire track. Each locomotive is assigned an electronic address and will only respond when the digital controller sends a message down the line for that particular address.

Locomotives will not respond until they get the signal from the digital command controller. It is a fantastic system and I would strongly suggest you start your model railroading with DCC (Digital Command Control).

DCC (Digital command Control) has allowed the beginner to control multiple locomotives and not just the experienced model railroader. Sound, smoke effects, lighting, more control, better realism and a huge amount of extra fun are just some of the benefits of digital command control.

As you can probably tell, I am a huge DCC (Digital Command Control) fan and wouldn’t even consider DC control. It may be more expensive, but the benefits are well and truly worth it.