can you hook up more than one handheld?

Lester Perry Wrote:can you hook up more than one handheld?

Not directly off the T6 since it has one throttle port..You will need throttle plug ins and probably a power booster if the layout is large.

I have the MRC Prodigy system and was just curious. Also I need to make a correction on another post here. I said all of the open house layouts I have been to were DCC, one of them is DC that would be Mikey. Sorry about that but a light just came on in my mind.

Brakie Wrote:The tri county area where I live is rich in railroad history and thus we have a abundance of modelers probably higher then normal and there is one hobby shop.Now go sixty miles South to Columbus and DCC is heavy used.I know most clubs in Columbus is DCC.

To be fair, prototype history and model railroading don't necessarily correlate.

New Jersey has had more tracks per square mile than any other state, and almost every major eastern railroad attempted to reach the port of New Jersey. Many major highways that don't directly parallel a railroad route are literally built on the former RoW of long forgotten railroads, and there is STILL a ton of trackage in New Jersey. There is a shocking number of railroad stations that have zero evidence of tracks ever reaching them, until you check old maps.

Just about every major railroad in the east tried to access the ports of New Jersey, either directly or through trackage rights and stock ownership, and then we have some pretty impressive stretches of track like the Northeast Corridor Bisecting the state. When Conrail was initially formed, I think only one small component railroad didn't have tracks into New Jersey.

New Jersey is also the most populated state per square mile, so I'd argue the odds are in favor that we have a significant level of Model railroaders in the region, using that reasoning.

Quote:Actually if you check you see MR did indeed push DCC.In fact a editor boldly stated he toured some layouts in DC and DCC was "everywhere".

I didn't buy that for one second since DCC was still in its infancy but,did notice this happen around the same time DCC advertisements started showing up.The next few featured layouts was DCC along with several DCC articles.

MR been known to push certain products and ideas while ignoring other things.MR endorse C83 but,never endorse C70-this was around the time C83 hit the hobby shops.

MR yet to endorse fine scale modeling.

Even if they encouraged it, I think DCC's merits alone are probably enough. People may not need all the "bells, whistles, and lights", which is fair, but there are lots of practical advantages to DCC, such as consisting, speed matching, etc.

I suspect that in reality, its not so much that Model railroader is trying to sway the hobby, as it is that they're trying to appease the manufacturers of DCC who advertise in their magazines. I suspect much of their Revenue comes from advertising, and I think Model Railroader wants to keep that money.

Model railroader also seems to gear itself towards beginners and intermediates, so fine-scale projects will probably not get as much attention as the same How-to articles on trees, written slightly differently, every year.

Besides, fine-scale projects are intimidating to beginners. In Gyms and other fitness clubs, There are rules about making to much noise and clanking heavy weights around, since their experience has shown that this significantly discourages gym membership of the more "average" folks who go there to get exercise, and ultimately results in lowered membership, which is bad for business, especially if your target customers are average people.

Likewise, a magazine like Model railroad probably does not want to reduce their subscriptions by discouraging anyone from the hobby because of an intimidating fine-scale project.

In the end, those people will go over the RMC.

I suspect that in reality, its not so much that Model railroader is trying to sway the hobby, as it is that they're trying to appease the manufacturers of DCC who advertise in their magazines.
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I agree seeing the DCC push started with the DCC advertisements..

MR does have or did have a strong influence on how we model.One could say the power voice of the hobby for years was Lynn Westcott.Lynn was the driving force behind the adoption of KD coupler and metal wheels as a modeling standard that we adapted and still use today.This was during the mid 60s when hobbyist was getting fed up with X2F couplers and cheap plastic wheels with unrealistic flanges.

faraway Wrote:I am a frequent shopper at Trainworld http://www.trainworldonline.com. They ship with DHL Express within 48 hours to my doorstep and the customs paperwork is completed by DHL. A very nice and fast way to get stuff from the US at a reasonable price not much over the USPS shipping cost.

Their online catalog did not list the Athearn CR GP9 in the pain DC version. Only the expensive sound version was listed for all new engines. I called them and they added the plain DC version for within two days and I ordered mine. That happened some month ago.

My question is, is Trainworld is a rare exception of do you experience it more frequently to get only expensive sound versions in your local and online shops immediately from stock?

My understanding is that Trainworld operates on a different business model than most hobby shops. While they pre-order what they think will sell like other retialers, they specialize in buying up unsold production direct from the manufacturer/importer at a very low price. To be fair, M Klein does the same thing, but Trainworld focuses more on buying up and selling unsold production than M Klein.

At the same time, the importers/manufacturers have increased the ratio of DCC locomotives to DC locomotives in a given run. Blackstone and BLI have apparently stopped producing DC-only and non-sound versions altogether.

Given the changes, chances are that the quantities of importer close-outs available to Trainworld that are straight DC are not nearly what they used to be. And/or Trainworld is not having a lot of demand for DC-only of newer releases. I notice that Trainworld's ads still feature plenty of older new stock that is DC - where most of the production was DC.

On the user side, there is a lot of push in the mainstream hobby magazines and on the forums for anybody new or on the fence to leap into DCC. When was the last time you saw an article on DC wiring? Almost all the modular groups use DCC because of the ease of handling track configuration changes. Almost clubs starting a new layout are using DCC.

The DC user base is shrinking to mostly home layouts and legacy club layouts, where spending on new, high-end locomotives is predictably less than for modular groups and clubs with new layouts. And plenty of newer home layouts have switched to DCC, too.

Fred W
Still DC at home, DCC at the club. But the club is causing me to switch to DCC at home.

The DC user base is shrinking to mostly home layouts and legacy club layouts, where spending on new, high-end locomotives is predictably less than for modular groups and clubs with new layouts. And plenty of newer home layouts have switched to DCC, too.

Fred
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Fred,How about a club that is 63 years old(The oldest club in Ohio?) and still going strong at the same location-they own the ex-express building..The membership thought of DCC but,the layout is still 90% brass track and believe this or not 80% of that brass track is as old as the club.

The layout should be on the Historical list.