No one's using converted, radio PowerCabs? PowerCabs can be sent back to NCE for a fee to have radios installed.
So, that's a video of your local model train club? It looks big. I guess it's one of those clubs where you're just there to run trains and have a good time. (I've heard about "operations only" clubs, and that they aren't too fond of visitors)
No need to. We got lots of Procab R's. We know a guy who used to work for NCE and dose all of our DCC stuff who got us a really good deal on them. Other then the fact that a PowerCab can be used with out a command station and the wireless, there is no difference between a Pro and Power Cab. If you turn on a PowerCab in PowerCab mode it loads up and says "NCE Procab" then flash's "NCE Powercab. If you take that same PowerCab and plug it into a command station, it just says "NCE ProCab." Trust me on this, I have used my Powercab as a Procab on that layout.
As for the layout it's self. Its in side a 10,000sqf building, and about 8,000sqf is layout. And its all one mans private collection, I just get to play with it. Or at least I did until I moved out west. But I still get to when I visit. We mostly run how ever and what ever you want. But there is a lose operation that I was setting up at one point. But I have to wait till more yards and industries are built, with they are still being built.
As for cameras, the problem with any spy or other camera that you find to fit in to a car or locomotive will be interference. This means that your picture quality will be good, then bad, depending on a lot of things. We do have one locomotive with a camera mounted in the cab, and it is hit or miss. Looks good in the yard, go into a tunnel and the picture gets fuzzy and then cuts out. Get on the high bridge near the ceiling, lose video. With DCC and radio throttles and WiFi in the building a little UHF of VHF transmitter, which most mini cameras use, just dose not have the power to over come these other signals. Your best bet for a really good high quality video would be to use a camera that transmits on WiFi. As a WiFi signal has more power to over come any interference.
Now I have tested this so to speak. I had mounted a camera that transmitted over UHF to an RC tank, and mounted my Cell phone with an app that let me transmit video over WiFi to another RC tank. I drove the TV camera mounted tank from my desk until I lost video. Then I drove the cell phone mounted tank until I ran out of house. Seriously, I never lost video over WiFi. I was at the far end of my house, where my router and desk where located, and I drove till I got to the other end of my house. Passing the TV camera tank. So in that test, I proved, at least to myself, that WiFi is what would work best for live transmitting.
A bonus of using a WiFi camera is that you could feed it to more the one computer screen, and even to the web. With the right software*, you could set up a driver at a remote location to the lay out. He use's the video feed to see what his train sees and the program to drive it. In other words, I could drive your train on your layout from my house.
Unfortunately I haven't fond a small enough camera that transmits over WiFi, has its own power supply, and is small enough to fit in the cab of an O scale or smaller locomotive. Then again, its been over a year since I last looked.
Now if you dont want to transimt, only capture video, then there are lots of good cameras for this. GOPros are one.
*JMRI has this feature, but I haven't dug too much into it. It was some thing I was going to try at one point. I have seen other layouts that do some thing like this. Ether they have the dispatcher miles away. Or in one case a man had his garden railroad set up so user's could log in, drive a train, and watch it from track side mounted web cams.
