another thing that I would do is give a layout to the set of The Big Bang Theory. http://travelwithgrant.boardingarea...vice-for-an-amtrak-noob/sheldon-cooper-train/
Unfortunately, they present model railroading and railfanning interest as though both are a childish mental disorder.
I think this is key, just as it was in 1969 when I received my first N Scale Train Set. "Good quality" is of course relative to the timeframe -- the Atlas "First Generation" Set I received for Christmas, is nowhere near the quality of today's items. (Well, most of them.) But it was affordable for my dad. I can also blow a huge hole in my own point: Lionel sets were rarely "inexpensive," relatively speaking, yet they were bought.
They had decades of name recognition, plus most items could be had without frustrating searches. And, they had good repair/parts availability, known generally to much of the public.
My gut is in order to survive in the future and gain new audiences...market, manuafacturers will need to get more into layout programming...I.e. DCC on steroids, Select a loco adress, select a routing, priority and switch list if required, and the computer executes the program. I know it is not what we like but it is definitely what the younger generation likes. Just look at robotic and computer programable Legos. Secondly we as a collective group need to kill the ..."Oh, so you play with Trains," comments, and the patronizing way they're said. I have never once ever heard that tone mentioned to anyone that does R/C aircraft or ships, let alone playing equally silly games like golf. The way you do this is through educating the public just how advanced our models are.
FWIW, I was at a club last month and two of the operators were teens, both were controlling their trains with iPhones, and I couldn't help but look at them and recognize that's the future....that is until one of their phones died.
My reply to the play with trains is a simple statement that I am recreating in miniature what I experienced in real life down to as much detail as I can add. Far from being toys my models are as close to the real 1 to1 items as I can get. What do I get out of it? An escape from the pressures of this life that helps me find a little peace and relaxation since the effort that goes into my modeling serves to blank out a lot of the disturbing facets of life. Helps me relax and keep what is left of my sanity. Beats setting in front of a TV consuming mass quantities watching a stupid phony reality show. Or beating a little round ball to death on a course trying to get it in a hole hundreds of yards away.
Makes me wonder.... If someone is controlling their train with a smart phone or tablet....and the battery dies...is their train now a 'runaway' or does it just stop ????
Better yet when a hacker gets into the puter or phone programing, and the switches are thrown into the yard and the 3:10 to Yuma piles into the ND crude special of tankers.
I can definitely see some wacko with a frequency jammer or some such device in his pocket walking thru a train show just watching trains being run with wireless devices crashing everywhere ! When we where in our 20's we would drive our vehicles around town. We had CB radios with 'kickers'. We would drive down streets and key up our mics and watch garage doors...that had automatic garage door openers....opening all up and down the street. Its all we did...we never went in any garages. We just thought it was harmless fun watching all them garage doors opening. Technology has advanced so much since then....I don't put anything past anyone to do worse things these days. And that includes some malicious and dangerous...destructive endeavors. Anyone who believes that today's electronic technology is foolproof and not downright scary....is living in a dream world.
It has been clearly shown in recent months that our electronic communications system is very flawed. Nowhere near safe. The hackers, all kinds, are getting ever more malicious. It is likely not going to get better, if ever, for a long, long time. Absolute dependence upon these means is dangerous, if not foolish.
Oh yea... You hear about it on the news every day. Just so I'm not being misunderstood by those pioneering new ways of doing things. I encourage you to go for it. Its the latest and greatest and everyone wants that...right ? Its just when...not if...it does go south...remember the wisdom of your elders is a powerful thing. We old f*rts dont hate the youth of the world. We just remember as kids 'hating on' the adults of our time because what they said was right a whole lot more times then they where wrong...LOL.
I guess none of you use (or would use) the existing wireless DCC controllers. All of these wireless DCC units are probably not even encrypted! With the DBTC (I am working on), you will need the correct pin number to even connect any controller to a particular locomotive! That is assuming that you do not intentionally disable the pin. Correctly designed DBTC trains stop a lot faster than DCC trains when communication is lost. This is because the DBTC communications if much-much faster and much-much more direct that DCC! And it is also bidirectional all the time! I have a great deal of respect for the great modeling-skills and real-railroad-information on this forum and the posters that have those skills! No offence intended but, some of the technology postings here sound like I would if I was giving my opinion on modeling-skills or real-railroad-information. Bob
How about: Connect to loco, quickly download the set of commands you what, then command the loco to execute them. Then monitor the display for what command the train is executing, its exact scale-speed and distance-to-go. All in a train set that costs less than the current entry level DCC sets. Bob
All that tech is fine for those who want it. Me I am far more than happy with simply turning on the power and advancing the throttle. I don't care to be inputting code into a device to get a light to come on or trying to remember the codes for 14 locos not to mention forty different turnouts. I have enough of a daily challenge just operating the that danged computer on my desk, figuring out the remote for my cable TV, and how to fold the seats down in my newer van. And with all the issues that keep cropping up in posts here with DCC no thanks. Even though I have some dual mode decoder locos they will run out their lives on DC.
I know a bit about this point as our son did this for a number of years. There is a lot more going on behind the scenes than appears. The Lego 'Mindstorms' kit is just that... one must built the Lego and then go through a series of programming steps that have more in common with binary programming than with higher level languages. There is a LOT of trial and error. The FIRST Robotics Challenges issued every year are basically "start from scratch" propositions... take a bunch of metal and parts, and make something that does what the challenge specifies (it's different every year), all within a matter of weeks. The Robotics team, usually 20 to 30 dedicated kids, spends countless hours after school and on weekends trying to make it happen. It doesn't always work when the competition day arrives. I bring this up because I think working on these projects has more in common with Model Railroading than we think. In addition, one of the founding principles of FIRST is "Gracious Professionalism" not the least of which is helping other teams in need. There are days in which I think we can use an order of magnitude more of that in this hobby.
