Model Railways - DCC help!

[Gareth1974]

After a 25 year hiatus, I’m in the early stages of building a model railway - following negotiations with the wife I’ve secured the use of one of the spare bedrooms for it, the room is 11.5 x 14 feet, so it will be quite a large layout.

The thing I’m struggling with at the moment is DCC Control. I want to use this, as it has so many advantages, but it seems so much more complicated that analogue, I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed by it.

The first problem I’ve come across is pointwork, where I can choose insulated or live frogs. I’ve just ordered £250 of points and have chosen live frogs based on this http://www.gaugemaster.com/instructions/dcc_concep... but have already seen contradictory advice elsewhere. It also appears that I’ve got to do substantial wiring work across the layout, and I’m not sure if I’m up to it frankly! I’m hoping that it’s less complicated than it appears at first glance!

I’d welcome any advice...

[Gareth1974]

MBBlat said:

Live frog can also be more expensive as you need some way of switching the current with the points with a break before make electrical switch. Again more of a problem in the early days of DCC. The basic principle is make sure there can never be a short circuit, this was tolerable with DC but can break a DCC system at worst, with at best being a pain as you have to reset the circuit breaker every time

This is a good illustration of the difficulties I’m facing. Sounds like I need a quantity of switches of some type, but I’ve no idea what I need to buy!