DCC technology

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I have seveal makes of egnines, ROCO, and various US companies. I am interested in starting my RR again, it has been in the closed for ten years.

I am interested in the DCC technology, but not sure of manufacturer, etc to fit all my various loco types?

Any help would be great.

Thank you

-- Erik J Sweet (sweetpartyof5@comcast.net), February 06, 2005

Answers

First of all, you need to make sure these locos still run. DCC will NOT make a poorly running loco run better. It has to be in nearly excellent running condition. Usually, a good cleaning and minor overhaul of the motor will help. Roco was a manufacturer for Atlas back in the 70's and built realonable good stuff. Model Power was OK then, but is mostly junk now, as was Life Like. Athearn is still good, even some of their older locos, and the motor/drive hasn't changed that much, other than the addition of flywheels. Once you have them running, you will need to decide on decoder. Digitrax makes several that fit right into existing locos. The older ones will require direct wiring (hard wiring). Again, Digitrax makes this easy with the DH163AO decoder. It comes with a harness that makes installation a 10-minute or less job. The hardest part is wiring the motor, but they include instructions for this. As for the older Roco, you will probably need a basic decoder, like the Digitrax DH123. Again, you will need to hard wire it, but the instructions are fairly straight forward. You'll just need some basic soldering skills, a few modeling tools, and you're in business. If you have any questions, you can go to the Digitrax web site, as well as NCE, Lenz, Atlas, MRC or Bachmann. The better solution would be to contact a place like Tony's Train Exchange. They can answer your questions and reccommend the correct decoder for what you have.

Good luck,

Jim O.

-- Jim Oliver (tunnelmotor40@msn.com), February 23, 2005.


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