About this site

Notes on running a model railway under DCC, written up as the problems got solved rather than reconstructed afterwards.

Why it exists

Most DCC troubleshooting lives in forum threads: forty replies deep, half of them guesses, and the one that actually worked is somewhere near the bottom with no explanation of why. This site is the opposite of that — one page per problem, the method that worked, and the reasoning behind it.

Everything here comes off a working layout. Where something took several attempts, the failed attempts are written up too, because knowing what doesn't work is usually the more useful half.

Who writes it

John Hudson, in Eastbourne. Retired, with a long background in computers and a homelab that gets tinkered with more than is strictly necessary. The DCC side of things is a hobby, not a profession — treat everything here as one person's findings rather than manufacturer guidance.

What happened to the rack planner?

This domain used to host CageNut, a homelab rack layout planner. It was a fun thing to build but it never found many users, so it's been retired and the domain repurposed for something that gets more day-to-day use. Old planner links redirect here. The code is archived, not deleted.

Corrections

If something here is wrong, it's worth telling me — DCC hardware changes and firmware moves on, and a page that was right two years ago may not be now. Every guide carries the date it was published and, where it's been revised, the date it was last updated.