Peter Brownlow – DCC, CBUS & Computer Control

Pete-B-0174Pete is a software engineer by trade. He started in the early 80’s with Texas Instruments programming the same type of micro controller chip that was used in the first Zero 1 decoders. He now runs his own small IT consultancy business.

He has always been interested in railways, unfortunately just young enough not to remember the end of steam. His interest started when his Dad took him on the Brighton Belle as a toddler and with the OO gauge layout that was at home. In his teens during the 70’s he was a member of Brighton MRC, meeting at London Road Station, Brighton.

Other aspects of life took priority and Pete did not rediscover railway modelling until he was in his forties. A raid of the loft at the parents house recovered much of the childhood OO gauge locos and stock, so being sentimental and unwilling to throw anything away, that is now Pete’s scale and gauge.

Pete joined the Model Electronic Railway Group (MERG) in 2004 which provides a nice amalgamation of the interests in electronics and model railways. He is currently part of the MERG team developing the firmware for the new MERG DCC system and is also the co-ordinator for the MERG East Midlands area group.

Pete also did live sessions for us at our virtual weekend events during the Covid 19 pandemic, recordings of these are available on this site.

  • DCC – an overview of Digital Command Control
  • JMRI – using the Java Model Railway Interface application as your control panel and to automate your layout.