but I really don't have a lot of hope
Keep in mind, a system could be built by anyone (not just digitrax) using the Digitrax system i.e. a command station. I wish I had gone back to school for electronics so I understood a little better what can and cannot be done on just a circuit board as far as receiving packets through a network.
With the Loconet in place, there is
no reason to have a signal hardwired to any particular detector. The easiest way to think about it is that the detector is the throttle and the signal is the locomotive and they are talking through an address. You could have a system that could but changed readily for different setups and you wouldn;t need to know anything about electronics, programming or DCC to do so.
I almost called digitrax just to see if my thought have any merit.
Jason