That big industrial vacuum would be good for cleaning up after the kids and dog as well. I just looked a the photo again and I see the exhausts, so not closed loop.
I've only had older Digitrax decoders loose their minds. I have a vacuum car I built for cleaning up spilled coal under the loadout. It is powered with an old DH121 and when cleaning up the most recent oops, it was making intermittent contact and then just stopped. I looked at it with JMRI and everything seemed normal but after I rewrote the pages I'd just read all was well. I didn't look specifically at CV19, I'll try that next time. I haven't had it happen with TCS, NCE or newer Digitrax. Still, it was an unfortunate accident and sounds rather costly. At today's prices, I would imagine there have been real train derailments with less financial loss.
I've seen another interesting feature of older Digitrax. It hasn't happened to me in a long time but I've had a derailment that shorted things out so shut off the track power with the throttle. I rerailed the offending wheels and when turned the power back on, every train I'd run that session took off at full speed. Several were parked in the yard which went from 6 tracks to one. I was able to put my arm across the yard throat and get power turned off but it was almost very exciting. I think, since they all took off the same direction it was something to do with Digitrax' ability to control regular DC locomotives. I've since turned that feature off on all DCC equipped locomotives so they only respond to DCC signals.