hallo all

[shy ted]

Hi
I have recently started this hobby ( christmas present off the other half) so i am a complete novice, the choice of present was mine i should add ,so the spark was there to begin with.
i have had a hornby digital simplon orient express set, and mounted it on a baseboard and am in the process of building it. already i am hitting problems, but i am confident the local shop and this forum will assist in the sorting of them.
i am an electrician by trade, so the simplified wiring of a digital set up was appealing. and if i take to it as a hobby have visions of a decent loft layout complete with fridge and comfy chair..i live in the dudley area west midlands..

[Flashbang]

Hi Ted
Welcome to the forum.
What problems are you encountering?

DCC requires two things to be uppermost - Rail tops spotlessly clean and loco pick-up wheel tyres to also be clean. Thats about 95% of the battle.

Metal Rail joiners (Fishplates) need to be a tight fit onto both rails they join together.

To improve reliability a DCC bus of two reasonably sized wires run around under the layout and fed by the DCC console is recommended. From this Bus pair of wires smaller sized dropper wires run at regular intervals up to the rails above. Ideally all connections being soldered. The DCC bus ensures 100% power/data is available to to all parts of the layout.

There are some good web sites with lots of information on DCC.
This is one...Link to web sites DCC page (http://www.brian-lambert.co.uk/DCC.htm) There are also some good DCC books available too.