John,
I'm familiar with the Uhlenbrock products from my German modeling. They are
very nice systems. In general, Uhlenbrock, ESU and Lenz have been producing
more advanced systems than their US counterparts for years now although I'd say
most of the major US brands have caught up (although you wont find
multiprotocol systems in the US like you will in Europe - Not much
Marklin/Motorola or Selectrix in use here.) I believe Uhlenbrock, ESU and Lenz
all have 10 year warranties on their products which is nice. Make sure you
look at the ESU and Lenz systems. They all have a little different take on DCC
compared to Uhlenbrock. As mentioned by many others, local support is key so
if your local dealer is an Uhlenbrock wiz stick to what he/she offers.
Decoders, in general, are interchangeable among all the systems. I live in NCE
country so we see a lot of NCE decoders and TCS decoders in these parts.
Digitrax decoders seem to cause problems when not used on Digitrax systems.
Digitrax is a great system but still clings to some legacy thinking which makes
their products slightly incompatible with other DCC brands. Their decoder
support for people using other brand systems is zero. I'd stick to Lenz, ESU,
TCS and NCE decoders in your situation.
As to compatible locs, stick to S-Helper Service products. If they don't come
with a decoder it's generally 5 minutes to plug one in. American Models locs,
in general, do not have a plug for a decoder. It's more hit and miss with
their products based on model and what generation you happen to get.
As mentioned, Kadee 802 or Kadee compatible couplers from S-Helper are the norm.
Track is tough and there has been considerable recent debate on the issue.
Again, in these parts, we use a lot of the Scenery Unlimited/Shinohara flex
track and switches. All are code 100 which looks about right for scale
modeling. The flex track works just fine. The switches are No. 6 and No. 8
although they tend to be a little short or small for their given size. They
both work fine for anything we've put through them from Big Boys on down.
Check out www.sceneryunlimited.net/su_products/shinohara_track.php for more
info and ordering.
Finally, order a couple of track gauges from the NASG at
www.nasg.org/clearinghouse.html to check your wheels, track etc. for reliable
running.
Chris Borgmeyer
Westfield Center, OH
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