Hey Everyone,

I have a question for you. (I knew moderating this forum for Allen would come in handy. :) ) I was searching Ebay this morning, I found a 4-6-2 loco that the seller states is equipped with a "Keller Engineering DCC decoder" and later states that the modeler will have to rewire for DC or DCC of modeler's choice. This makes me wonder if it is really a DCC decoder. Do you have any thoughts on this. If it is a DCC decoder. Who is Keller Engineering. Thanks for clearing this up for me.

James R. Mitich

-- James R. Mitich (Challenger@hrp.every1.net), September 10, 2003

Answers

To my knowledge, Keller is ancient history. They made a command control system, but it was not DCC. (It pre-dated DCC.) If you see anything with Keller, consider it as having nothing at all.

I had a Keller G-scale module and was able to find a buyer for it. That was a number of years ago. You can always buy this locomotive and try to sell the module.

General note: DCC is a specific kind of command control. Command control is the general name for any kind of electronic control where a device is inside the locomotive receiving commands. Also realize that there may be other digital command control systems that are not compatiable with the NMRA DCC specific standard. As far as I know, you can safely use the term DCC to specifically refer to the NMRA DCC standard without confusion with any other digital command control systems. They exist, but obviously, their manufacturers don't want to confuse you, so they call their systems something else.

Likewise, decoder and booster are generic words that have taken on specific meaning with respect to DCC. Other command control systems call their equivelent of a booster, an amplifier. They call their decoders modules or receivers.

All the above provide corresponding capabilities, but are not compatibable between command control systems.

-- Allan Gartner (bigboy@WiringForDCC.com), September 10, 2003.