Here’s a guy on the cutting edge of modern model railroading. If designing and building your own DCC booster and command station doesn’t establish your model rail electronics creds, I don’t know what does. Lately, Steven’s been experimenting with using the Arduino platform, and churning out some really interesting proof-of-concept circuits for automatic control using infrared and RFID train identification. He’s also been experimenting with repurposing a Nintendo Wii nunchuck as a throttle. His website is worth a look if you want to see where to future of DIY model railroad electronics.