What are decoders and how do they work? I get the basic idea of DCC, but I am confused about this. Please help!
decoders are a chip which only responds to a certain code. with dcc all commands are sent through the rails as code, the decoder takes the codes that are addressed to it, and decodes them to respond to the command sent.
it is similar to the chip in a phone which only rings for calls sent to that phone, but not any of the other phones whose calls it receives. in both cases, there are many commands sent to many different locos, or phones, all on the same system.