Pieter, I have to agree with your statement. I have had the Digitrax Super Chief system for 11 years now. I used it with my N-scale layouts until 2008, when I switched to using it with my S-scale layout. My opinion is that I find it to be less than reliable. It seems to always be a crap-shoot to see if it works when I turn it on. I have a 10x10 room and the radio operation works well about 90% of the time. The system sometimes doesn't like my engine's address (I only have one operating S engine right now), so I have to reboot it and enter the address again.
This weekend at our "Big Texas Train Show" we had two or more throttles that wouldn't work (including mine) with radio frequency. Luckily our club has lots of UP5 panels installed so it was not too bad to plug in, but that still defeats the purpose of having gone through the expense of having my throttle converted to radio. There were a couple of mad dashes to the nearest plug yesterday when another train had a derailment (we were running two or three trains on each of the two mainlines on the 16' x 60' set-up). The Digitrax system itself worked well at the show, but some of our throttles had problems. A pet-peeve of mine... the Digitrax throttles STILL don't have an on/off switch to save the batteries, which it eats like there's no tomorrow. I have gotten quite tired of the problems with just the basic operation of the system. I have been doing quite a bit of research, and I am actively and seriously working toward switching to R/C (remote control) and battery-powered engines. My Railmaster RS1, which is my next project, will be built for the purpose of R/C integration. If I can pull it off, my Digitrax system will be listed on eBay! The new and up-coming Aristocraft "Train Engineer Revolution for HO" looks very appealing. I will worry about sound integration down the road; it is not that important. - Peter. On 10/18/2010 1:05 pm, Pieter Roos wrote: > DCC is definitely a lot like politics, or religion. People may complain about > their system, until someone mentions a different system, then their favored > system is all sunshine and roses... > > I'm not sure why some people are so dead-set on "their" system being the > preferred one; maybe they are afraid that all the others will go away and > leave them 'orphaned'? > > Favorites do tend to be somewhat geographic, the often heard advice to "buy > what the other guys in your group have" probably helps perpetuate that. The > truth is that if you test drive a system a couple of times on operating > layouts (not just back and forth on a test track) and you like it, you will > probably be happy with it longer term. The ability to share cabs is a good > reason to buy what others in your group use. Bob's issue with multiple > Digitrax layouts at a show might be a reason NOT to buy what is popular in > your area. > > Pieter E. Roos > -- Peter Vanvliet ([email protected], or [email protected]) Houston, Texas "It is easy to give up; anyone can do that..." http://pmrr.org/ (my model railroad) http://fourthray.com/ (my company) http://houstonsgaugers.org/ (model railroad club) -- ------------------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/S-Scale/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/S-Scale/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: [email protected] [email protected] <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [email protected] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
