DCC Made Easy

Overview

DCC Made Easy
Digital Command Control for Your Model Railroad

• Author: Lionel Strang
• ISBN: 978-0-89024-616-0
• Pages: 48 (full color)
• Cover Price: $14.95

A Good... But Not Great... Primer on DCC

As DCC becomes more and more pervasive in model railroading the need for a good primer on the subject. The best I've seen so far is "DCC Made Easy" by Lionel Strang. The first two chapters are very brief, and are little more than a brief history of model railroad command control systems and a treatise on the advantages of adopting DCC for your railroad. These chapters take a total of four pages.

How Does It Work?

The third chapter, "So How Does It Work?", is another two page chapter. I find this chapter entirely too brief and somewhat misleading. Beneath the write-up on principles of operation a graph depicts how a locomotive's motor is pulse driven. However, it is not made clear that the source of this pulsed power is the DCC decoder, not the DCC signal applied to the rails. Having been trained as an electronic technician I was quick to understand this discrepancy, but I have to wonder about what it conveys to people with a less technical background.

The Heart of the Matter

The fourth chapter begins the substance of the presentation. It comprises twenty pages of information on the system components: throttle, command station, and booster. It has useful information on track wiring and power supplies, and a section on protecting against short circuits on turnouts. It also explains clearly how a "cab bus" in DCC differs from one in a DC based system. However, it doesn't say much if anything about all-in-one starter systems, or user-interface. As a primer, the lack of this information I regard as a serious omission. Hopefully this will be covered in revised editions.

After having explained how to get the DCC power/control signal onto your rails, the final chapter provides an overview of how to install DCC decoders in your locomotives. This is useful information, but certainly not for beginners or individuals with no background in electronics.

Afterthoughts

DCC Made Easy contains a few appendicies. Of these I found the most useful to be the buyers guide section. However, this section will obviously need to be updated at least annually in new editions for the book to remain of value.