a simple DC block power diagram
http://www.thegmlenterprises.com/
here is a link to the folks that made my throttles #3 & 4, have been in use for over 18 years with no real problems. I have had great service out of this company, I recomended a usefull change to the design of his throttle, and he built one incorporating that change, and sent it to me free of charge.
http://www.walthers.com/exec/productinfo/700-350
here is a link to my throttle # 1, which has been in use for over 20 years. I have had to replace the phone jack plug a couple times, b but have had no other issues with it.
http://www.zealot.com/forum/showthread.php?t=164383
this is a link to the tread on my home RR
Good memory walkaround units are not cheap, and by the time you have bought one or two you are in the range of a decent DCC system (I much prefer NCC)
wiring a DCC layout is simpler on surface, but you have to wire decoders in your locomotives or buy locomotives with them already in. the simplicity of the wiring is ofsett by the fact that once you get into DCC you have to deal with programming. I'm slowly learning on DCC, but to an old school guy like me, it is really another hobby.
If I posted a photo of the back of my control pannel, it night give you nightmares, but with five throttles and fourteen blocks ( see my thread in the logging section), but if you just have two power packs, you can use sPDT (single pole double throw) switches to route power to the insulated rail of any block. I have drawn a diagram of how it has been done since the dawn of time. I don't care what the DCC folks will say, but it is much easier to wire a block like this than it is to install and program a decoder in a locomotive.
Right now I have one foot in the DC world, on my home layout, and on the narrow gauge portion of our club layout, and the other foot in the DCC world at our local Clarksville Tn club layout, where I have five sound equipped locomotives. Good sound pushes the cost of a decoder from $15-$20 up to $100-$120. when running a DCC train I like a walkaround controller with lots of option buttons, and those are not cheap.
the cost and trouble equasion is going to be different for every different modeler. If you are new to the hobby, you can buy locomotives with decoders factory installed. If you are like me and have some 20- 45 year old brass locomotives, they will need to be re motored, as well as having decoders installed. I have a lot of geared locomotives that I have re motored and regeared to get them down to a prototypical speed with DC. DC slows them down even more making them way too slow.
Usually If I have an electrical annomally on my DC layout, it knocks out a block or two. We have had annomallies at the club that have knocked out the whole DCC system for weeks at a time while we try to wrap out heads around stuff that is way more complicated than my messy nightmarish DC control pannel. When that happens , I can run trains on the narrow gauge (DC) .
The sad truth is with DCC we are dealing withe stuff nobody I've met knows well enough to explain it to me, and untill a couple years ago I was an automotive technician. some times folks would ask how something worked, and one of my co workers would say FM F***ing Majic. I love DCC, it is awesome when it works, but it can be frusterating as **** when it doesn't.
Bill Nelson