Signal Cab Throttle

1.4 brings virtual momentum and on-phone horn and bell to DC operators, Z21 support in beta, and iCloud backup for everything you've built.

Signal Cab is the model train DCC locomotive controller for iPhone and iPad — built for operators of every level, from a home loop to a club operating session. Whether you run Lionel, Bachmann, Athearn, Kato, Atlas, or Broadway Limited, Signal Cab is ready for your session.

THE THROTTLE

A precision throttle with 128 speed step resolution and haptic feedback on every notch. Every step reaches your decoder, so the loco ramps as smoothly as the slider moves. A swipeable carousel runs multiple locomotives.

YOUR CONTROL SURFACE

On iPad, drag and resize throttles, macros, turnouts, and routes onto custom grid pages — a "Yard" page, a "Main Line" page — that rotate with you. On iPhone, the tabbed Actions grid keeps your most-used controls one tap away.

TURNOUTS & ROUTES

Your command station's turnouts and routes appear automatically when you connect — no setup, no re-typing addresses. Throw turnouts with a tap, fire routes to line a whole path, and watch live state update.

YOUR FLEET

Build your roster with photos, names, and custom organization, on short (1–127) and long (128–10293) DCC addresses. Browse your layout's live roster, sort it, and add only the locomotives you want — your edits are never overwritten by a later sync. Home Layout scoping keeps a club's roster out of your personal library, and DCC-EX Controller files (.dat/.json) import with a duplicate check.

ICLOUD BACKUP

Turn it on and your locomotives, consists, turnouts, routes, macros, and settings back up to your private iCloud, automatically or on demand. A new device becomes a restore, not a rebuild.

FUNCTION CONTROL

Control F0–F28 with momentary and latching modes. Decoder defaults for SoundTraxx, Digitrax, and NMRA built in — or build your own with custom labels, icons, and colors.

MACROS & DANCE MODE

Chain commands into one button — stop everything, kill the lights, ramp down gently. Dance Mode fires lights, bells, and horns across every active loco, then stops itself.

CONSIST BUILDING

Create a consist and Signal Cab picks the mechanism your hardware supports — command-station consisting on DCC-EX, virtual consists everywhere else. Per-member direction and speed trim, plus per-function routing to the lead engine or the whole set. Command-station consists survive a station reboot.

CV PROGRAMMING

Read and write CVs on the programming track — no separate programmer needed — with a visual speed curve editor for CV2–6 and the full 28-point table.

DC OPERATION

On plain DC track, virtual momentum (Beta) eases a loco up to speed and back down like it has weight, with stop always immediate. Horn and bell play through your phone, since a DC loco has no decoder to sound them.

KID MODE

Hand the throttle to a kid with no frustration. Kid Mode strips the app to one locomotive and four big buttons (headlight, bell, horn, mute), caps top speed, and gates the exit.

PROTOCOL SUPPORT

DCC-EX Native. Full command set with programming and diagnostics. WiThrottle. Works with JMRI, MRC, and compatible command stations. Roco/Fleischmann Z21 (Beta). Throttle, turnouts, and CV programming.

RELIABLE CONNECTIONS

Signal Cab finds DCC-EX and WiThrottle stations automatically — no IP addresses to enter — and now identifies DCC-EX hardware correctly even when it advertises over WiThrottle. Auto-reconnect recovers dropped links, and address conflict detection catches duplicate addresses.

SAFETY YOU SET ONCE

Decide what Emergency Stop does, what happens when you close the app, and how long a session can resume. Manage track power from the app.

BUILT FOR APPLE

Haptic feedback on every notch. Siri, Spotlight, App Shortcuts, and iPhone Action Button support. Now in English and Swedish, following your device's language.

EULA: https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/ Privacy Policy: https://signalcab.com/privacy