That thread is 12 years old, and the people who have it love it. The people who have never used it, their opinions pretty much don't matter, but also that is so long ago, that rail clamps were not that well known.
the stock joiners will not do the job of conductivity, and very few people argue that for track power nowadays.
Also, yes SS track is more expensive than brass, but it's less expensive for me to power my rails and have decoders than to not power the rails, use cheaper rail and add batteries and chargers.
After about 4 locos, track power always wins the cost argument.
Centralized control is a big deal, if you have more than one loco running and/or more than one operator. The one example of many is an effective "all stop"... and I use it when running alone but with 2 trains. Avoids crashes that are my fault.
Centralized control is a fundamental concept of DCC, in that the Command Station knows what locos are running at any one time, therefore an effective way to stop all locos by going through the "list" of ones running is easy.
But it also helps with consisting, handoff of locos between operators and many other things. DCC is just more than direction control and speed.
The more you know about DCC, the more features you will find you like. Jon, you no longer run DCC I believe and have gone battery, so it appears that you have not really gone into depth on what DCC brings to the table.
It may not have features that YOU want, but when advising someone else, it helps to let them discover what is available, not put it down because you don't know these things or want these things, which is of course your personal prerogative.
Greg
www.massoth.de
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