A District (DCC or DC) Control Panel....

[Sumner]

A District (DCC or DC) Control Panel....

I'm using an 8 district DCC-EX command station (Districts A to H) that was under $200 to build. It allows any district to be DCC, DCC Program or DC at any time. There is a 2 track main that circles the whole layout (24' X 6'). One half of the main (2 tracks) is District A. The control box below allows either the inner main track or the outer track to be turned on or off at any time.

District A's two tracks can be DCC or DC at any time. I could run a DCC loco on one of the tracks (inner or outer) and a DC loco on the other but not at the same time. I can run a DCC loco on one of the tracks and then turn the power to that track off. Turn the power to the other track on and change that track to DC and run a DC train on that track with the same throttle. DCC-EX has no problem doing any of this using your throttle.

This control panel does two things. One is that it controls the power to either track (on/off). The second is that if a DC or DCC engine is on one of the tracks and the power is turned off you can throw a switch for that track that will turn on a LED to indicate if there is a DCC or DC loco parked on that track (ask if you have questions about this).

The following images will show the build of the panel and where it will be placed. The build time was probably about 6-8 hours which includes the design time using Fusion. Cost about $10.

 

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If you see this on a forum ask questions or email me at contactsumner1 (at) gmail (dot) com.

To be continued and a link to this whole build ( HERE ) .

Sumner

[$2 Bill]

What are you using to edit the pic's?

[Sumner]

What are you using to edit the pic's?

Paint.Net.   

Free, although I donate every year or two.  I really like how easy it is to resize a picture and add arrows and text (couple minutes average per image).  Also it is easy to  control the file size of the finish image before posting.  Most all my images are between 50k and 100k in size, quite small compared to the size of a picture you take with your phone. 

This was/is important to me as I pay to have my website hosted ($240/year) and for a number of years it was quite expensive the larger the web site was.  Now the yearly cost is about the same but you can have a lot more storage.  I have over 18,000 files up on the web site, probably 90% of those images (2.8 GB).

Sumner

[Sumner]

A word of warning on PaintNet. 

Recently I downloaded what I though was the right download to use for an update and it wasn't and it put an add on the computer that would come up when you turned the computer on and was a bear to get rid of.  I'm good with computers but finally gave up and had a friend help.  He had to remove files in a number of places to git rid of it including deleting an item in Windows registry which I wouldn't of ever found.

This wasn't PaintNet's fault but I thought I was on the official download page and wasn't.

Make sure you are if you decide to use it.  I've used it for years and love the program.

Sumner

[$2 Bill]

I use an old standalone copy of PhotoScape that made similar output but since move to Windows "store" now has most features under paywall. Used it to edit pics for power "brick" page.
I had an Old web site was hosted thru several ISP as "free" service but moved around a couple times before Comcast dropped User Web Service some years ago. That site was so old had to edit many things because MS etc dropped features of other programs. I really like Word with vector graphics because make "Bots" & other problems when scraping the site but only IE supported it. Had Full Java not JS for parts too but Java RT had big security problems including continual Zero Day Bugs so moved to HTML5 & "simple" CSS.

Sadly you can't trust any search engines not just google more so when use "AI" search. Try search only web like by clicking web on google site etc.
Even getting the real site... several security problems @ those sites causes malware etc. Can't remember the most recent issue, while "popular" I didn't use it.