I have been asked to explain DCC to friends who played with toy electric trains as youngsters and wonder what this modern development is.
There are several layers to the answers but I shall approach it as I did my career as a Power Engineer on the London Underground!
The manufacturing wizards have put tiny imps into little boxes
that you fit in the toy engine of your choice. There are also tiny
master goblins who live inside the control unit. The master
goblins translate the things you do with your fingers into
messages for the correct tiny imp to tell it what to do. All the
messages go to all the imps but they only understand the messages
meant for them and ignore the others. Sometimes the imps get
confused, over excited or just naughty so you have an emergency
stop button which stuns all the imps until you reset it.
Some Goblins are now able to understand messages sent from computers.
You can buy boxes that allow the imps to control the engine and they can turn on lights and make smoke etc if your toy engine has those devices installed. New toy engines have sockets for the box to plug into or old toy engines can be wired up straight to the right bits of the toy train. you can also add new bits to your old toy engines but you have to make sure there is room in the toy engine. Diesel Toy engines have more room for more things to be added than steam toy engines.
More expensive boxes can be purchased which have specially trained imps that have been taught all about actual real engines and these can make the right toy train behave just like the real engine.
Even more expensive boxes have additional specially trained imps
with recordings of all the sounds the real engine can make (some
have even recorded things they heard whilst on the real engine
like station announcements). You can tell the goblins how loud the
imps should play.
Some imps are trained to make special lighting effects and they can work in teams if the Goblins tell them to. I have some imps who make the noise of shovelling coal and they work with imps that make light like flames in the real engine's firebox appear inside the cab of the toy engine.
If you were silly and put the diesel imps in a steam toy engine I think the imps would not know because they do not have windows in the box. If you see a window in your box the imps have escaped and you have to send it back to the wizards who might send you a new box or say it might have been your fault a bit so give them a bit of money towards a new one. Two sets of wizards have said one of those things to me each.
The wizards have had meetings and have agreed to train most of the imps and goblins to do the same things but they have left a few commands free for the wizards to do their own things so some goblins tell some imps to do the wrong things - but that is alright because you can tell the goblins the right thing to tell the right imps what to do. The wizards have put all this information on the interwebby thingy so you might be able to find it and might be able to get the imps to understand - but often they don't because they are bored or just naughty.
The wizards also want to save money and they don't care how many imps they cram into the boxes so they often put imps in that are only used to copy some country's real engines. I have some imps who think they are in the USA and will not turn the right lights on but I have not given up yet.
Some boxes of imps do not go in engines but do things like change points. Some Wizards have trained imps to do either point type things or engine type things and allow humans to decide which that box of imps shall do.
There is also a box with imps in that make bird song and ambient marshalling yard noises and that box is fitted in a box van truck that you leave in the siding. See Hornby's Box Van here:-
https://youtu.be/6l_fhR7BY0A
You may also have to tell the goblins to tell some imps not to work as you might be running an express on a branch line and top speed might be too high for the curves. Also the goblins can help inexperienced humans change the drive characteristics of the imps to make the toy engine easier to drive.
Here endeth lesson 1.
There are several layers to the answers but I shall approach it as I did my career as a Power Engineer on the London Underground!
It is all Magic.
Lesson 1.
Some Goblins are now able to understand messages sent from computers.
You can buy boxes that allow the imps to control the engine and they can turn on lights and make smoke etc if your toy engine has those devices installed. New toy engines have sockets for the box to plug into or old toy engines can be wired up straight to the right bits of the toy train. you can also add new bits to your old toy engines but you have to make sure there is room in the toy engine. Diesel Toy engines have more room for more things to be added than steam toy engines.
More expensive boxes can be purchased which have specially trained imps that have been taught all about actual real engines and these can make the right toy train behave just like the real engine.
Some imps are trained to make special lighting effects and they can work in teams if the Goblins tell them to. I have some imps who make the noise of shovelling coal and they work with imps that make light like flames in the real engine's firebox appear inside the cab of the toy engine.
If you were silly and put the diesel imps in a steam toy engine I think the imps would not know because they do not have windows in the box. If you see a window in your box the imps have escaped and you have to send it back to the wizards who might send you a new box or say it might have been your fault a bit so give them a bit of money towards a new one. Two sets of wizards have said one of those things to me each.
The wizards have had meetings and have agreed to train most of the imps and goblins to do the same things but they have left a few commands free for the wizards to do their own things so some goblins tell some imps to do the wrong things - but that is alright because you can tell the goblins the right thing to tell the right imps what to do. The wizards have put all this information on the interwebby thingy so you might be able to find it and might be able to get the imps to understand - but often they don't because they are bored or just naughty.
The wizards also want to save money and they don't care how many imps they cram into the boxes so they often put imps in that are only used to copy some country's real engines. I have some imps who think they are in the USA and will not turn the right lights on but I have not given up yet.
Some boxes of imps do not go in engines but do things like change points. Some Wizards have trained imps to do either point type things or engine type things and allow humans to decide which that box of imps shall do.
There is also a box with imps in that make bird song and ambient marshalling yard noises and that box is fitted in a box van truck that you leave in the siding. See Hornby's Box Van here:-
https://youtu.be/6l_fhR7BY0A
You may also have to tell the goblins to tell some imps not to work as you might be running an express on a branch line and top speed might be too high for the curves. Also the goblins can help inexperienced humans change the drive characteristics of the imps to make the toy engine easier to drive.
Here endeth lesson 1.
