Model Railway Forum

I control my small layout using a NCE PowerCab. I find one of the most useful features is macros but also find I am slightly limited by the maximum of 15 macros of limited length. If I were to want to have more / longer macros what would be a good system as I note some competitor systems do not mention macros. I presently operate by setting up my terminus station and fiddle yard on two sets of macros enabling a route to be set from any terminus track to any fiddleyard track by executing two macros. I set the signals by individual switches. Operating this way I avoid needing complicated switch panels and wiring. My control panel consists a simple A4 sheet of paper giving a-computer generated layout diagrams and the numbers of points, signals, locos and macros and can of course be readily updated as additions / alterations are made

You can "chain" macros; so rather than having two separate macros to execute individually you can link the macros together. It does require a bit of "reverse thinking", though! You first need to work out all of the instructions you want to use. Say, for example, you had 19 instructions you would need to create a macro for the last ten instructions first (e.g. called macro 2). You can then program the first macro (e.g. macro 1) with the first nine instructions - the tenth instruction should be "9999". After entering this number the system will ask you for the number of the macro you want to "chain", in this case 2. When you then ask the system to run macro 1 it will execute both macros 1 and 2.

You can chain more than 1 macro but with the PowerCab system (remember it is only a starter system) you will still be limited to a total of 15 macros.

If you add a System Box then this will give you the full capability of a PowerPro system and increase the number of macros you can create to 256, though each is still limited to 10 instructions.