Meifford Controls
Meifford was designed from the start as a traditional DC controlled layout. I had thought long and hard about this and even built a DCC controller, but finally decided that the potential difficulty in fitting decoders in some of the locos and the fact that I didn't expect to have more than one train in motion on the same piece of track at any time, it would be traditional DC.
Things Change....
Well, the above was written for how it was in 2019 and everything was pretty good at the time. Of course as I have been working on the layout ever since, there actually hasn't been that much real running of stock since then.
What I did notice, was that slow speed running was pretty good, when the track was clean, but the low voltages put out with DC running, soon showed that there was a problem, at least with some locos. Then of course the issue of swapping locos at a station became quite a game - it was possible, but switching sections in and out and swapping controllers meant it was easy to get into a mess!
Opportunity!
Covid and lockdown meant having plenty of time to spend on the layout through not being able to go anywhere, and this actually gave me the opportunity to 'sort through the drawers' and finish a few models and tackle outstanding issues. One was the DCC controller that I had built but didn't seem to work. A couple of hours testing it showed that both the command station and handset were working items, but just not together! The solution was so obvious that is was missable - the two bus wires that are used for communication between the two parts were reversed!. A quick change round of the proved it.
I borrowed a decoder fitted loco from a friend, built a test track .... and was sold. The slow-speed running was amazing and just right for my light railway, where nothing ever gets up much head of steam!