DCC Consists

A consist, in the context I'm using the word today, is a set of locomotives put together to pull a long train. With DCC there is more than one way to put together a consist. The complex technical way is to give each locomotive its own address, and then create a consist address and assign the individual locomotive addresses to this consist address. The consist information is stored in your DCC command unit.

The easy way to create a DCC consist is to simply give all the locomotives in the consist the same address. This also makes things much easier if you're taking your consist to run on your club's layout; you won't have to program a consist into the club's command unit. The trade-off is, if and when you separate the locomotives to run them individually they will all respond to the same control signals if they're placed on your layout at the same time. In that case you'll need to give each of them their own individual addresses.