… the DC-Car System is thanks to the now retired Claus Ilchmann. After a visit to Miniatur Wunderland Hamburg (MiWuLa), Claus was infected with the model car virus and went looking for an opportunity to realize this at home on the model track. In Miniatur Wunderland Hamburg the cars drive computer based on the Faller Car System (FCS).

The operating system used by Miniature Wunderland Hamburg is an in-house development that has not been released and is being used for the plubliek. Until then, there was no (freely) commercially available system with more or less the same capabilities

Claus' visit to MiWuLa became the reason to develop his own system, which eventually led to the current DC-Car system. The DC-Car system is built around the DC-Car decoder. With these decoders, cars can be controls a DCC central or special DC-Car function building block using infrared signals, similar to the remote control of the TV. Due to the use of proprietary infrared stop locations, the Faller stop coils are no longer needed. The cars brake at a stop location and pull up slowly when driving away. This thus gives a much more realistic picture of road traffic than the abrupt stopping and pulling up of the standard FCS vehicles.

All settings, as with a (DCC) locomotive, are CVs changed or modified. Meanwhile, the decoder is so small that it also fits in vehicles for scale N and in passenger cars for scale H0. A special voltage converter ensures that these decoders can also be used in cars that operate with a battery voltage of 1.2Volt. Also, the use of white and blue LEDs, which require a higher voltage, is not a problem.

In addition, Claus Ilchmann has for the control of divisions, switches, signals, level crossings, doors etc. special servo decoders that can be fully programmed via PC and can also be controlled via DCC.

With the above mentioned technique it has become possible to make the car traffic, just like in Miniature Wunderland Hamburg and nowadays also at RAILZ in Rotterdam, automatically expire whether or not by way. computer control. At RAILZ, the MCC system is driven, which was developed by Leon van Perlo.

The special thing about the DC-Car system is the standard Anti Collision System. With this system, the cars can exhibit a very realistic road behaviour as they can drive, stop and pull up completely without colliding, and this is completely independent without the intervention of human or computer.

On behalf of Claus Ilchmann and Siegmund Dankwardt I wish you lots of reading and modeling fun.