Our Club's Future:

      Throughout the history of the Miniature Railroad Club of York, it has always prided itself on displaying the most modern in technological advancements within the model railroading hobby during its annual shows, as well as through its educational mission, hosting open houses for Scouting groups, etc. As the club continues to move forward into the 21st Century, the mass of technological advancements within the hobby has become overwhelmingly astounding. Within the past 5 years, ready-to-run models with exquisite super detailing, steam and diesel locomotives with sound synchronization and other advanced features have been available to the public and ever growing in the hobby.

      Along with these advances in modeling, there have also been developments on controlling the operations of a model railroad. When our existing club layout was originally constructed in 1955, club members installed what was then the most advanced control system at the time, a Direct Current (DC) progressive block system. This system has been in continual use on the club layout for the past 50 years, with regular system maintenance performed to ensure optimum operation of the layout. In the mid 1980’s a new type of control was developed called Digital Command Control (DCC), which changed the way a model railroad was operated. Instead of operating at a single location with a control panel, you would have a hand-held throttle which through various means would allow you to follow your train around a layout. The past 25 years has seen vast improvements and refinements of this system, to the degree that each DCC equipped locomotive has its own remote control chip built in. In the spring of 2009 a group of club members proposed converting the layout to DCC, it was approved several months later. Upon completion of the 2009-2010 show season, the layout will have its existing control system removed and replaced with a state of the art DCC system.

      After several brain storming sessions and much well thought out planning, we have chosen to use a DCC control system made by NCE to operate our layout. The club will be returning to regular operation for the 2010-2011 show season, with the DCC system fully installed and functional. When this is completed, the club will once again be on the forefront of technology for display and education of its guests. As the club continues to move forward it will continually look towards making improvements which will better help to interpret the prototypical operation of railroads throughout the country.