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DC Wiring Or DCC For New Layout?
Patrick wants to hear from someone with experience in the hobby and asks:
“I need some advice please. I designed a layout with some minor modifications based off the Mineral Mountain/Metro central layout combined. I created it with anyrail. What I am facing is which should I go with: DCC or DC? I am fairly good with DC power wiring, but the DCC concept is new and unexplored to me. The last HO layout I had was 18 years ago, all hard wired with minimum turnouts. Where should one block end and one begin? How much power will I need? I plan on adding magnetic uncouplers in addition, and know I need a rerailer or few. Does someone have any advice to help me?”
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The good thing about DCC is that it makes your track wiring simple and it allows you to run trains instead of throwing switches.
The bad thing about DCC is that it’s initial cost is rather high, but when you factor in the cost of electrical switches and wiring, not to mention the complexity for larger layouts, the DCC option gets more and more attractive.
The final deciding factor is how you are going to run your layout. If it’s simple and you don’t intend to run more than one or two trains at a time DC is fine, but if it’s complicated and you want to run a number of trains (or if you are going to have operating sessions with many trains at a time) DCC might indeed be the way to go.