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Perhaps someone can offer some 'hope' for our new club layout?

 

We've recently moved to larger quarters and are setting up our old modular layout and making it 'permanent'. It is Scaletrax and Gargraves with a few Ross turnouts.

 

My wife and I have been immersed in moving from our home for the last month or so and still aren't into our new place as yet so I've not been able to be as  involved as I'd like with the new construction at the clubhouse. At present only myself and the 14 yr old junior member are 'scale' enthusiasts and have PS2 equipment. The other half-dozen or so active members are all conventional operators and lean heavily towards the toy train end of the hobby.  They have little to no interest in DCS and its special requirements. Consequently, it was decided in my absence to wire the layout into 4 blocks for conventional operation mostly.  They think that we'll be OK to run command and I realize that TMCC/Legacy will probably be fine.

 

Am concerned that I'll not have much luck with trying to add DCS from what I understand about the wiring requirements. It worked fine on our previous home layout as I wired it in the STAR pattern and had little trouble with it.  Is their any likelihood of it working on the club layout?  We have two large loops and probably close to 100 feet of tables.

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Several Buss wired modular layouts are working with DCS.

It varies with the layout size, connectors used, and how many drops to the Buss per module people used.

As Clem says, Try it, it may work anyway, especially if you have a Rev L TIU.

If it has signal issues;

Get or make a bunch of Susan Deets' filters.

Add one on the output of each TIU Channel in use.

If still having trouble;

Add one to the power drop on each module with low signal, Start with the lowest signal, add one and try again.

Some folks had extra trouble with yard areas, add one to the dead end of each siding.

Sam, don't worry about that star wiring stuff my layout was built in the early 90s to run conventional, with some 70 blocks.  When DCS came out I simply plop the TIU down in the leads from the transformer and have been running happily ever since.  I don't have star wiring I do have common bus and I have no problems there are many other people on this forum will also have common bus with no problems.  You say the layout has four blocks.  I suggest you try using each of your TIU channels to feed a block.  If you wire the TIU in passive mode, you don't even have to feed all the layout's power through your TIU.

 

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