Hi,

In Marklin Digital Club newsletter Vol 31, issue 2 and 3 (2019) Curtis and Rick discuss setting this up with a M84 and a MS2.
happy reading!

Cheers,

Since the ECoS supports RailCom, you can do it even better with an ECoS if your decoders support RailCom. RailCom feedback allows to tell freight trains from passenger trains from express trains and trigger different actions.
Block control using the ECoS can also be done without RailCom using s88 feedback.

I should give some more detail of what I am trying to do.

In my impatience to get my layout going, I laid all the track (K and C) including lots of contact track sections. In my hurry I skipped any thought of signals or auto block control. Now I want to go that next step.

I have lots of contact tracks, with S88 connections. I decided recently to utilise Railcom with my Ecos, to display actual train ID in sidings used for parking trains. This meant I had to additionally use ESU Railcom detectors connected to those storage sidings, and this loco ID display now works well.

(Most of my locos have ESU decoders so of course have Railcom. Those Marklin locos that have Mfx decoders, I have added a Railcom transmitter into each).

However, to install Railcom ID detection I had to pull up the relevant tracks and add insulators to allow current detection for Railcom instead of the S88 contact track method. A lot of work.

So, while I understand use of the Marklin braking module as a method of auto block control, I was hoping there might be some method of doing such control without pulling up more track to install the physical barriers required in the tracks. I was talking to a friend recently about the layout he is constructing, and he seemed to think that the CS3 could do this control by a script having been written into it which did the loco control by control instruction rather than by interruption of the track power in the way that the braking module does, because if there was some way of also doing that with the Ecos it would save me pulling up track.

But the above assertion of what the CS3 can do, I suspect is actually wrong, and the only way such a process can be done is to use a computer control program such as RR&Co, and that the CS3 actually does the control by instructing activation of braking modules.

This is why I asked my original question on this thread.

I suspect I have to do a lot of track pulling up !

Norm

Dale wrote: "or just run software to do it... "

yeah yeah . So one has to start up the computer, log it in, and every time you want to put a different train onto the layout, one has to adjust the software programming !

I don't want to be a computer programmer, I just want to be able to put any of my many trains on the track, select the address, and off we go.

Dale I am just poking fun, not having a shot at you, I stand in awe of the astonishing things you are doing with your software, and the sign system, and the etc etc.

But ...…. every time I attend a running session at one of my many friends places where they are running RR&Co, after a short time we all stand around while the operator tries to figure out why the program is playing up and trains won't run. And insert a different train ? Too hard !



regards
Norm.

Hi Uwe,

Using the CS3 with m84's ,s88 allows you to have simple train operation but the process of creating events isn't as easy as using a good software package.
Just my 2 cents worth.

@Uwe, depending on what you want to do, and the size of your layout etc, you CAN stop and start trains, as long as you have relays or signals to cut the power to a stop-section of the track. This is no different than what people did in the old analog days.
With a CS3 (not MS2!), you can create events that change these relays/signals when an S88 point is activated. (You can even connect your track-detections points directly to the solenoid devices, thus bypassing the S88 system completly)

But it will not be "nice" to watch in the long run, as trains will stop abruptly on the power-less sections.
You can then throw even more electronics and money at the subject, installing "braking modules" etc.
THIS will give you a nicely running train layout, and no fiddling about with the controller when adding a new train, except for defining its address.

BUT in the end, the complete software control is the only way to do it perfectly right. (and opens the posibility to do SO many other things). You even save on cutting and isolating track-sections, and there is no need to spend money on electronic brake-modules. (Decorative signals -now for show only- can also be of another brand than the obscenely expensive Märklin ones...)

CS2/CS3/EcOS devices are all running software. No matter how you look at it, it is software.

What differs is the quality, complexity, sophistication and usability of the software.

Different devices take different times to start up. Some of my devices are up and running within a second. Others may take some minutes.

I leave my layout Windows PC running, and when I do have to boot it up (after a power failure) I have it set so I don't have to log in.

I think people should base their assessment of software on how well they can run it themselves rather than how other people can, or cannot, run it.

Thanks to all. Good stuff!!

Merry Christmas,

Uwe

Donb's advice about the Märklin Digital Club newsletter was spot-on. I signed up and they sent me back issues to 2017. It comes out every second month and best of all it's free.

Can You show us a diagram off this layout for inspiration, how to setup on MS2