Well you are right about that, i guess i meant just the metaphor of rivet counting is fairly excessive so translated to road names, saying they must be consistant to be realistic is also rather excessive. Hence rivet counting? But thats also not always a bad thing, i like my locomotives to be accurate to their road specific details, which to some could seem excessive, but its to myself. Going around telling others something like their cprail ac6000 is unrealistic as it doesnt exsist isnt as good...i do have one of those though, had to convert it to an es44 to make it right :-P

I just want to say, that first response is crap...you can definetly have total realism without a refined specific road name. Only the most nit-picky of railroaders will be discouraged by that confusion of where the railroad is? Its your railroad, and if its a made up road then you can have whatever you want! I model cp, but have MANY other roads that ive found on sale or just wanted the model, they all run on my layout and yet it still looks plenty realistic. Only a rivet counter will be bugged by that, and if theyre good people they'll hold it to themselves to be picky. Gotta have fun and run whatever YOU want most, and whatever YOU find realistic. 

If you go with many other switches they will tell you the position. These include the tortoise machines, costly but very reliable. Those take more work to then create the pannel of dpdt switches to run it. But not really that difficult. Then theres the atlas and i believe, bachmann electric switches that come with momentary switches that slide to either direction and throw the switch. You can then label each side and thats the position of the switch. I dont really understand the idea behind dcc turnouts with the ez command, as you can move anywhere anyways, youll always be stuck beside the control station anyways why not just lay out some old style switches and run them to that same spot. Cheaper, and gives you switch position.

You should really be able to run both locomotives from that dc transformer just fine, two basic locomotives with likely just a lamp and motor each cant overload it unless theres some kind of real drag on the motor making it stall. Even if they are a bit out of time with eachother they should run double headed fine still, ive never speed matched a loco(given i am using digitrax) and still run huge consists. With good couplers they pull eachother to one average speed, now if they go to fast this usually gets the fast one spinning its wheels and "polishing" the track. Im wondering if the smell could be from this very effect, making the trains rip around the track (like most kids do) and thud pushing one to the point where they overheat? Just my experience.

The real question is why are you buying steel track? It dirties much faster and worse than nickel silver...

Scratch building is always an option...it's not that hard. And about as cheap as it gets!

Haha because it's from Canada, can't say I've ever heard that before! Our stuff usually costs more because it must be shipped from the US...but other than that it's all the same thing within north America.

The momentary switches won't work, because the tortoise needs constant power to work, and it switches by reversing polarity rather than a sudden pulse of power.you'll need a dpdt switch and the tortoise will have instructions on how to wire it properly.

Well I would think since the cone comes off leaving a perpendicular wall to the tracks, you could simply cut a rectangle the size of the kadee coupler box at the right height and glue it in there. Now if you wanted to be able to easily close the cone too that's another story, that may take some ingenuity to design....nothing comes to mind yet for me other than maybe some sort of rotating coupler.

Does it have a decoder in it? I know they can release smoke when fried by I'm pretty sure simple dc locos can't. If it is you just need a new decoder and be sure you find the point where it shorted.

Well the system is by signal logics, and the photocells were in an unknown package but I believe they are also signal logic. With no light they have full resistance, and with my incandescant train room lights the readings were like previously said 0-19. It is a module though so lighting is always different where we take it, so I'll be swapping them with IR sensors to make this whole thing much easier and more practical.

Yup I'm still around, and yes they were all from the same pack of 10. Thanks for the sites guys!

Thanks, that site is great! I'm using a $200 signal logic system so I must figure this out...however my only options with system are the photocells or IR...so the less troublesome IR should be what I replace them with, plus I can run it in the dark!

Hi
so I'm attempting to figure out how to fix my crossing signal system, it's been puzzling me for months now. So I've been told by the "experts" on this system that it's possibly the photocells being no good. I've tested all the cells for resistance and I've gotten readings from 6-19 and even a 0, and I'm not sure which readings, high or low, are good and which are bad? Anyone know more than me about photocells, please help...I may just have to switch to infrared sensors!

Oh really, that's odd? Well then I guess yeah your right, or to save a decoder you could run wires through the entire train...not easy though. Or I just simply let it run from the tracks, I don't care about a few lights enough to put a $30 decoder in to control either the markers or the headlights... But that's just me!