Digital Command vs. Analog: my thoughts

Photo curtesy of Amazon

Photo curtesy of Trains Magazine 

 It's been a while since I've done a good old fashion "response to a video posted on Youtube" blog, and I wanna do anther one today. 

This time, it's not about weather a manufacturer is bad or not, but about how one were to run their trains. 

Sam's Trains released a video that talked about which way people refer to run their trains, analog or digital? 

Now before I get too deep into things, I wanna quickly go over what that means exactly. 

Analog means you plug in your controller, put the train on the track, and run it. No fancy bells or whistles are attached, just you, your train set, and your controller. 

Digital Command means you've got some options for how you can run your trains. You can run them just like you would analog, but you can also run multiple trains at once and control their speed separately, and the thing DCC is most known for: you can control the trains sounds. 

Trains with Digital Command come with sound that include chugging, puffing, and the trains respective horn or whistle. 

So which is more popular then? Well, in Sam's video he did a poll on Youtube that showed that more people prefer to use Analog over digital, but Sam pointed out that there's more to this that meets the eye, and it really depends on who you ask or where. 

I have to agree with Sam on that point. Weather someone wants to use analog or DCC really depends on how they want to operate their train layout. 

Some people might want DCC for their railroad for the sound and to add realism. Others may just stick to having analog because they have older engines in their collection and model trains coming with realistic sound is a "take it or leave" it type of deal for them. 

Personally, as much as I like trains that have sound, I do mostly want to run digital. As of the time of this blog, I mostly have trains that run analog, as they have no fancy sound controls or even a chip inside them for that to be a thing. 

I'm also still on the hunt to gather up enough money for Bachmann's EZ command controller. 

Yes guys, I know I'm gonna sound like a Bachmann fan boy for saying this, but A: I do have a lot of EZ track, and in turn EZ power track, and B: At least as someone outside looking in the EZ digital command seems very simple. 

The most complicated part of the process is assigning the train (or trains if your running both at the same time or a double header), to your controller, and that for the most part is just pressing some buttons down for a couple of seconds until the engine scoots up a bit (which is a sign that the engine has been connected to the controller according to Bachmann. 

One final thing I will add is that I do appreciate those manufacturers who make trains that can be run by analog or DCC. As I've stated before, I don't have a lot of DCC trains or the Bachmann EZ Digital Command, so it's nice to see certain trains come with an option of being run by regular old analog, or DCC. 

What are your guys thoughts? Do you run trains by analog, or DCC?