DCC Impulses Column - 2
1. The programming track station and selector switch at the
PebbleCreek Model Railroad Club.
1
A tale of two worlds
At this juncture, I’m reminded of the joke about people: “There
are two kinds of people in this world, those who divide the
world into two sections and those who don’t.”
There are two ways of programming and two kinds of program-
ming track and two ways of programming on-the-main. And
just to make things interesting, different manufacturers use dif-
ferent names for the same thing.
One way: on a programming track
Sometimes referred to as service mode programming, pro-
gramming on the programming track is where you can write to
and read from your decoder on a dedicated track.
The command station function of your DCC system (see my
column “Anatomy of a DCC System”
is respon-
sible for controlling the programming track: the command sta-
tion turns on and off the power to it, monitors the current flow
MRH-May 2014
