DCC Impulses Column - 8
From Mr. DCC’s workbench
A short guide to consists
What is a consist? I was discussing this column with my wife,
Linda, and she said, “Do your readers know what a consist is? I
really don’t, but I hear the term all the time.”
So, let’s get this out of the way. Prototype practice refers to the
make-up of a train as the consist. Model railroaders refer to
two or more locomotives that are running together as “a con-
sist” or as being “consisted”.
Okay, you want some locos to run together. How do we do
this? There are several ways:
Basic Consisting – brute force
If you have a set of locos that you want to run together, you
can give all the decoders the same address (whether it is a
short or long address). If you have a loco to run backwards,
change its direction of operation by adding one to the value of
CV 29 if it is even, or subtracting one, if CV 29 is odd.
This doesn’t require any special features in the decoders and
creates a consist that is virtually bulletproof. It will work on
any system and doesn’t require any special input to the sys-
tem. Just dial it up and run. It only uses one location in the
system memory, no matter how many locos are in the consist.
“While command station consisting is easy,
there are some drawbacks, too.”
MRH-Feb 2014
