[neil_s_wood]

I must admit I am holding back on ordering a new system until I hear what it has to offer. I only hope it's not another anticlimax like the Hornby DCC effort.

 

[neil_s_wood]

You know I think you're completely right there Doug. It would be unbelievable if Bachmann came out with some feature which the Ecos or new Veismann system did not have. I must just be gullible in even listening to hype like theirs.

And as for it being out in January..........

 

[neil_s_wood]

QUOTE There's the nail on the head buy a top range DCC system, not necessarily Lenz, and you should'nt be disapointed. . Why is it these companies want to eat the whole cake, and often end up not doing anything well. I don't see Goodyear wanting to manufacture cars, or Ford Tyres. Why then should Hornby or Bachmann want to do DCC badly. The mind boggles.It's because of the train set market. Selling train sets is big money. While Bachmann and Hornby have plenty of starter sets with analogue controllers, until recently neither of them had DCC ones. They both identified a gap in the UK market and filled it. Both these companies see that DCC is the way that model rail is going and want to cash in. Remember that when people start off in model rail, the company they start with is the one that they usually stick with and keep loyal to. Why do you think so many people on this forum have loyalty to Hornby? It's hardly because of their earth shattering product, it's because most of us started out on Hornby train sets (me included) and many people saw no reason to go elsewhere as they were content with what Hornby offered. Many people will still stick with one company which they will only buy product from. Hornby and Maerklin are two notable examples.

If Bachmann and Hornby did not provide DCC starter sets then people may start to look at German Trix Maerklin, Fleischmann and Roco starts sets. While their DCC attempts seem pathetic to the DCC enthusiast, a starter is hardly going to know that or care. He sees the familiar badge and he's happy.

I myself have thought f

k it I'm just going to buy an Ecos as the Bachmann Dynamis will inevitably be as big a disappointment as the Hornby effort. I guess it was wishful thinking that I could get a similar system for half the price.

It will probably be delayed for a year anyway. As someone said it will only have been announced now to stop people buying other systems. Theres no way it's going to have any of the features that Doug mentioned other than maybe radio control which is a big seller in the US market.

 

[neil_s_wood]

I am getting the impression that this system will only be ground breaking in terms of what is available in the UK, which is not very much. The fact that they are prioritising consisting seems to indicate that this system is primarily aimed at the US market.

I am mystified by why anyone would feel the need to have five locos in a consist even on an American layout? The most I have seen is four and that was one of those trains which is over a mile long. Try modelling that in HO.

 

[neil_s_wood]

QUOTE (Mark Thornton @ 6 Nov 2006, 09:43) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>Wasn't there an Australian iron ore train with eight?
Quite possibly but how big would your layout have to be to accomodate that? Essex, Surrey?

 

[neil_s_wood]

Wow thats a hell of a size of a train, over 7k's

The irony is I was living in SA in 1989 and knew nothing about this.

 

[neil_s_wood]

QUOTE (Mark Thornton @ 6 Nov 2006, 20:13) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>"What's 12 miles long, weighs 100,000 tons, and produces 48,000 hp? The BHP Iron Ore (Australia) demonstration unit train that last June set a record as the world's longest, heaviest train, with 682 ore cars, eight GE Transportation Systems AC6000 locomotives, and GETS's LOCOTROL[R] EB distributed power system. The train, in a 2-168-2-168-2-168-1-178-1 configuration with locomotives spaced throughout, traveled 447 miles from BHP's Newman and Yandi mines to Port Hedland, in Western Australia's Pilbara Region, in about 10 hours, with one defective coupler problem enroute."

Anything you can do I can do bigger
I must be in a daze, I was living in Ozz at that time and I missed that too.

 

[neil_s_wood]

QUOTE To pick up Neil and MMD's argument that "Bachmann and Hornby should stay out of DCC" and "buy a top of the line" system - I think we have a fundamental difference of philosophy here.

I have never said the above so please try to stick to the facts rather than fantasy. What I have said is if you are going to do it get it right rather than make a mess of it. It would be great to see Bachmann and Hornby catch up with the rest of the world and offer good DCC systems. It looks like Bachmann has now done that.

One of the reasons for my advocation of a top of the line system was that some off them are very appropriate for UK style layouts in terms of the features they offer and if some modellers were aware of these features they may well be interested. Addittionally you can only drop the price of these systems by losing spec's and capability. You only get what you pay for and if you do not pay the money you will end up with an inadequate system. By basing your decision to buy based soley on budget you maty regret buying an incompatible inadequate system whic you will turf after a few months. You will find that this arguement was advocated by many others.

QUOTE Some folk are saying , in effect , they oppose anythign other than top end DCC, and they don't want the mass market players in DCC - they like it as an expensive little niche supported by a cottage industry

You obviously didn't read my posts if you're trying to say that that is what I said. What I have said was why try to restrict others if they want a better system as was being advocated by some who reckoned we should all go with the Hornby effort. I recommended good NMRA compatible systems like the Roco MultiMaus as good budget starter systems. My issues were with the dubious specs of the Hornby system and reported compatibility issues and the knock on effect this would have on DCC adoption in the UK market..

Now the new Bachmann system here is very different to the Hornby. They have stated upfront that this is NMRA compliant rather than we kind of hope it might turn out to be as Hornby did, (designed to be NMRA Compliant). This system looks good and designed for adults rather than kids, as one person stated about Hornbys system, " it looks like a Fisher Price toy".

I am actually interested in this as it is NMRA compliant and has some good features. This is a system which is designed for current DCC standards rather than the "competitor" which has been designed to standards which are now history in the international DCC world. From the flyer that Gary has posted this new Bachmann system has features which make this a very good option for someone getting into DCC. I would like to know more about this system as it seems to be the most promising UK based DCC option at the moment.

 

[neil_s_wood]

QUOTE (dwb @ 5 Dec 2006, 10:02) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>>DCC in the UK is at the crossroads.
From the sound of the Dynamis specs that are being "drip fed" out of Bachmann, I think they've decided to cross over. They dipped their toes in the water with EZ-Command; upped the ante with sound and are now going full throttle for an all singing all dancing system.

I deliberately used the term "drip fed" because I have reason to believe that Bachmann are purposely playing their cards close to their chests to prevent their competition getting any ideas. Given that a lot of these features are dependent on software in the command station, it is not unreasonable to deduce that Bachmann don't want Hornby to add some last minute bells and whistles to the Elite before it leaves the factory or more last minute yet, Margate on the delivery trucks.

David
I agree, they do seem to be trumping Hornbys effort and are waiting till Hornby commits themselves before revealing what their new system can do.

 

[neil_s_wood]

QUOTE Are you saying the Bachmann EZ system is "incompatible with DCC"?? We are not simply discussing the Select here No we know that is not the case. I'm really not sure why you would think that. I was only referring to the Hornby efforts

QUOTE To be clear - I'm suggesting we are seeing, and should welcome, the emergence of a "mid price" bracket of DCC systems at around £100 all up in the UK. Systems falling into this bracket are the Multimaus (though you can't buy it directly in the UK) the PowerCab, the Elite, and Dynamis. All offering 4 digit systems with full programming, point control, plenty of functions , consisting, but compromising in the area of sheer amps, number of cabs supported , feedback and other high end features. The elite doesn't do what you said it does. It has three digit addressing and only eight functions plus lights. Hardly plenty when you consider the new spec is twenty. Whether it is NMRA compatible or not it still has poor spec's compared with it's rivals.

QUOTE The compatibility issue has been heavily overplayed on this forum by MMD and yourself . The facts , from repeated first hand reports , are that the Select is not designed to do anything other than change the decoder address, and this it does with Lenz, ZTC (ie Digitrax) and Hornby decoders. It looks as if there is an issue with TCS because it looks as if Hornby have given the Select only one programming mode out of 4 . They have explicitly stated the Elite will support all 4 programming modes (I'm no expert here, I'm quoting) Compatibility is one issue yet to be established, my main issue was the poor specs. The system has the specs of systems made over five years ago.

QUOTE The decoder is more of a problem because it won't read back , although it seems some folk have managed to program the CVs. Until I'm confident it can be addressed succesfully and will take addresses over 99, sadly I won't be buying a Hornby decoder Neither will I.

QUOTE These look to me like technical glitches from a new entrant to the field launching first products , not evidence that this is not DCC equipment. No one has found any existing player who has developed/licenced Hornby's system so it looks like they have developed a DCC system themselvesAgreed, the information we got here was that a firm in Cambridge who designed it for them.

QUOTE The existing players have not taken DCC into the mass market, and most show little interest in doing so. I welcome the emergence of new players who are willing to produce affordable DCC. But I don't think their systems are what you are looking for. DCC is not mainstream anywhere yet. It is however much more popular in Germany and the States. It is unlikely that it will become the predominant form of control for a while but good moderate priced systems will enable that to happen. My concerns are that a repitition of the Zero one enterprise will shut people off to DCC. From what I have seen, which is all that anyone has at this point, Bachmanns system sounds more promising as they have cooperated with Lenz and ESU and ensured that there system is NMRA compatible. Once more facts are known we can make an informed judgement. At this point we don't know the negatives of the new Bachmann system.

QUOTE This sounds to me very like "if you don't pay £250 for a DCC system it won't be any good". You can drop the price of these systems without losing capability because the same system generally sells for 2/3rds the price in the US . You could pay 75 Euro for a MultiMaus and get a reasonable system but if you want higher specs than you have to pay for the extras. My concern is cost cutting will only be acheived by removing features. The fact is in terms of price you are being severly overcharged for many things in the UK. You have several layers of tax which jack up the price of things in general which is why most things in the USA cost 2/3rds of the price. Just because it's cheap in the USA doesn't translate to it being cheap in the UK as the Government in the UK will be taking a far bigger cut. The point you seem determined to be missing is that I have no problem with budget systems, I have used a budget system for some time and it is the way to start. My issue as I have said a thousand time before is poor budget systems. In this respect Hornby has done itself no favours by starting way behind the competition in terms of specs.

QUOTE If this isn't rubbishing the Multimaus, the high priced Flieshmann control centre and the Marklin /Motorola systems. I'd be grateful of clarification Let me know where you got that quote from. If that came from one of my posts it must have been an error as this is the opposite of what I think.

QUOTE The existing players have not taken DCC into the mass market, and most show little interest in doing so. I welcome the emergence of new players who are willing to produce affordable DCC. But I don't think their systems are what you are looking for.
I disagree, Lenz, Trix, Fleischmann, Roco and Digitrax all have budget systems. They may not have taken off in the UK but they are quite popular elsewhere. If I could get a cheap system to do what I want I'd have it. I was going to go for the MultiMaus but by the time I added all the additional components I needed to get the results I wanted I was on the same price as an Ecos.

So I figured why not just buy it all in one system. I am open to new systems and hope that the Bachmann will offer them at a cheaper price. I could do with saving some money. From the information provided it sounds promising. We'll just have to wait and see.

 

[neil_s_wood]

Very often some of the 100 loco's you mention so are old, junk and not suitable for conversion. (typically old tender drives and some open frame motors).

This is something I'm finding out as I go through my backlog. The split frames are too much hassle.

Another point if you buy cheap decoders don't expect good DCC performance. It stands to reason that if you buy a good DCC setup your going to compromise performance by buying budget decoders

Agreed

Even on your own figures the cost of DCC is very large - bearing in mind that a couple of Gaugemasters and some switrches will do the job for perhaps £200 (and a lot of time)

When the "DCC premium" is down below £1000, it starts to be a geniune option

Well that's what you're going to have to make your decision on. If you want a flash car you have top pay for it. If you want a flash rail system why would you expect to get it for nothing?

We don't know what Dynamis will do in practice, but I bet Barwell have read previous postings on here, picked up "NMRA compliant" as a good line to throw at Hornby, and stuck it on their leaflet

This may well be the case, and who could miss an opportunity like that.

Hornby claim (I think from memory) 18 functions on the Elite . Bachmann are promising 20. The difference in functions is only modest

As stated previously Hornby claim 8 functions plus lights for the elite so unless they added 10 yesterday your information is incorrect and the difference is far from modest.

Please don't trot out the line "everything in Britain is a rip off so stop complaining and get used to paying through the nose£" . Especially when you and dbclass50 have been arguing on this forum that British loco prices should double to £200 a loco in line with Germany...

What we have said repeatedly is you get what you pay for. So please keep the fiction writing for somewhere more appropriate. A 200 quid loco from Germany comes with very high specs including digital sound. You really do have some issue with facts don't you.

The quote was from your own posting earlier in the thread.

You deliberately misquoted me. "Their" referred to Bachmann and Hornby as was apparent in the comment. Please don't resort to making things up. This seems to be a trend.

Dgitrax do not sell a budget system in the UK . The Zephyr start set costs about £150 from the main importer, and hardly anyone else sells Digitrax. This isn't budget. Nor is Flieshmann - apparently their system costs about £300 !!

They do starter systems which can be bought from other countries. It is your choice if you want to limit where you buy from.

If you want budget go to a pound shop.

Isn't that the truth. Why are you even considering DCC if you aren't prepared to pay for it?

However, this was not good enough for Gary. Out he came like an Exorcet Missile trotting out the same old entry level/full featured system rubbish attacking the "experts" who he again wrongly accuses of saying that all entry level systems are not worth considering.

To be fair to Gary, he didn't start this current spat. Ravenser reignited this by misquoting people and applying his creative fiction writing skills to the subject under debate.

Got my eyes on a Boxster though so it's all academic. Not exactly a family car but we end up using my wife's car anyway for outings.

Very nice Dennis.

I am extremely confident that there will be some very attractive digital deals for UK railway modellers in 2007 and this will encourage large numbers of UK modellers to look at digital seriously.

That is true. However you don't want to buy too far down the scale as you may regret it and definitely will want to upgrade and expand your system. This is why;

If on the other hand you only want a simple system fine. Expect an amps limitation, limit on the addresses that the system can use. If you have sound and other features they may not work, with the next generation of feature packed sound decoders

Roco Multimaus (only available as part of a loss-leader HO trainset , from a small number of retailers, price somewhere between about £110-130 for trainset

Yet again this is wrong. You can buy these separately from most German model rail shops for far less than this.

This thread seems to have gone off on the same issues as the select ones mainly because of Ravenser misquoting people and making stuff up to try and resurrect the select arguement. The Dynamis does look more promising and it will be interesting to see what it offers. It does look like they will wait till Hornbys committed themselves before they reveal facts as they will have learned a lot from Hornbys mistakes with their systems.
We are all going to buy systems that are appropriate for our needs but just beware, when you buy, what the limitations are of the system you choose. To be honest I don' really give a monkeys what system you buy but like MMaD says don' come back bleating when you find out you paid peanuts and got a s

t system. You were warned. ..and we'll laugh at you.

 

[neil_s_wood]

QUOTE (Oakydoke @ 6 Dec 2006, 09:10) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>Some comparative figures.

Max no of locos & functions

Digitrax Zephyr 10 / 9
Super Emp. Builder 22 / 9
Super Chief 120 / 13
ZTC511 16 / 9
Hornby Elite 255 / 13
Lenz Set 100 255 / 13
Bachmann Dynamis 40? / 20
Roco MultiMouse 10 ? / 20

Of course this doesn't tell half the story.
The elite only has 8 plus one for the lights according to Hornby. Where do you get the 40 for Bachmann? They only reckon it has 20.

 

[neil_s_wood]

QUOTE Thinking further about that display screen and having just read the Viessmann catalogue 2007/2008 pages on their Commander at Lokshop.de, it occurs to me that the Dynamis might have some route diagram display software to go with the built in point control. Now that would be something! That would be good but it would price it out of Bachmanns target market.

 

[neil_s_wood]

QUOTE (Oakydoke @ 6 Dec 2006, 10:09) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>I got the 13 functions from Lisa's comparison table, however the Hornby web site says "9 functions per locomotive"

The 40 for Bachmann? Please read the post again. Its 40 locos in the roster and 20 functions.

The point of that post was to demonstrate that the new "mid-priced" systems are not far behind some more expensive products.
ah ha

You may want to look at DWB's post to see what the more expensive products offer.
QUOTE For completeness:-
ESU Ecos - store details on up to 16,384 locomotives; access 20 functions
Viessmann Commander store details on up to 4,000 locomotives. I would still regard Hornbys elite as a budget system, anything under a ton is. Mid priced is 100 to 200quid

QUOTE A bit late for Bachmann to change things now, I would think? At least they have the opportunity should they desire.

QUOTE But I'm curious why Neil dismisses the NCE Power Cab and the Roco Multimaus - both under £100 on his own showing - thus: In what way did I dismiss them? These would be very good budget systems. However I have gone beyond a starter system and have other requirements.

QUOTE What is precisely is wrong with these 3 systems that only systems £150 more should be considered for a modest home layout??
There is nothing wrong with the latter two, they are good systems and reputable. The other one we've already covered in detail elsewhere.

It really depends on your individual requirements as has previously been said. If you just want to run trains then get a cheap system that only does that. What I want is a degree of automated control without having to involve a computer and Ecos and the Viessmann Commander offer this. One of the features which appeals to me is the shuttle feature which, in conjunction with S88 occupancy detectors will automatically shuttle trains back and forth between two terminii. Also, in conjunction with S88's, automatic switching. This is what I want and am prepared to pay for. If I was to buy a Multi Maus and all the additional components neccessary to facilitate this I would pay about the same money but have loads of separate components. I would also have to have a pc on site and the Rocomotion package so in some ways this option would be more expensive.

 

[neil_s_wood]

QUOTE It's also quite big, not something you would want to pick up to use ESU have a remote control which goes for about 100 Euros which you can use in conjunction with the Ecos. This would be easier to carry around with you.

QUOTE The display is not in colour though. And it doesn't look like a Fisher Price toy either.

 

[neil_s_wood]

QUOTE (Oakydoke @ 6 Dec 2006, 11:56) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>That's where we'll agree to differ.
I think the whole market is about to change /is changing, and our concept of price points and system capabilities is being challenged by these new products.
Anyway are we talking about price or capability/specification?

I'm playing devils advocate here, for instance; last year I would have called the Digitrax Zephyr an entry level or budget system. Well it still is the entry point for Digitrax if that's the way you wish to go, but at the current price it couldn't be classed as budget. The Zephyr on it's own doesn't seen to stack up well against a couple of the £100 units although it's still very good (my opinion anyway).
Is it now mid-priced with an entry level spec? or an overpriced entry entry level system?

Similarly the Lenz Compact; in terms of value for money pitched against similarly priced new products, it now looks very poor. Now if they sold it for under £50 against the E-Z Command or Select ? It won't happen and I think it may be replaced soon anyway.
The Compact is definately "basic" or sub-entry level, but is priced against much better spec'd systems.
Basic/Sub-entry at entry level price ?

What is available between £120/150 and £220 ?
Gaugemaster/MRC prodigy Advance
ZTC 505
Digitrax Zephyr
Lenz Set 90

The more I think about it, the choice is between £100- and £240+, the systems in the middle don't have enough going for them. Just my view, you don't have to agree with it .

Cheers everyone.

I'd agree with a lot of what you say there. Your choices are really below 100 quid for a budget system or over 200 for a fully spec'ed. The Lenz and Digitrax systems that you mention are old and outdated. While they are still ok systems they were designed to standards which were current five years ago. Only one company is buildings systems to that standard today. Maybe they will be replaced. But certainly any DCC system under 100 quid is a budget system. All the mid price systems you mention are a bit dated now. Technology becomes dated quite quickly nowadays.

I really don't think the new cheapies from Bachmann and Hornby will change things in anything other than a local level.

First, Germany and the USA are far larger model rail markets and have had several budget systems for a while and the top end systems there haven't come down in price, if anything they have been getting bigger, better and higher spec'ed. There are budget systems made by Roco, Fleishmann, Lenz which have been around for at least three years. There are new budget systems by Roco and Trix/Maerklin which have come out recently but it remains to be seen what the overall impact is.

Secondly the Bachmann bottom end system has been around for a while and nothing changed so I would be surprised if these new systems changed anything.

Maybe this year will be different, who knows? It is all speculative... and thats where the forum comes in.

 

[neil_s_wood]

QUOTE Clearly Hornby have had expressions of interest from outside the UK.

Hornby stuff is on sale in most model rail shops here. The exceptions being ones which only sell US or German stuff.

QUOTE Chatting to the guys at Warley MRC who are thinking of moving to DCC there does seem a concensus that a traditional knob that you turn is prefered to any other form of control among those who are looking to move. It could be that Dynamis has a look that may not appeal to the newcomer however there may be a knob control yet to be revealed on a hand held unit so who knows. A few years back there was a bit of discussion about this as regards the Lenz 90 and 100, one of which has knobs and the other has a push button, and it was reckoned that knobs were the way to go. Most of the systems have knobs. The toggle thing on the Bachmann Dynamis may be a way of navigating menus as is used on the Ecos and Viessmann systems.

 

[neil_s_wood]

QUOTE (Mark Thornton @ 7 Dec 2006, 08:13) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>Indeed it does look a very good system. The only significant missing feature is consists (although you could use POM to program CV29 for those decoders that support advanced consisting).
I think it's the best budget system going at the moment.

I have not really looked at the consisting thing as it's not something I ever use or care about. I always regarded it as something popular with the yanks as US outline is where it is mainly used.

 

[neil_s_wood]

QUOTE For these reasons I'm sure the DCC project was conceived with a larger target audience in mind than just the UK.

Maybe the overall project long term might be but the initial efforts definitely aren't. The Hornby efforts would be fighting a loosing battle attempting to compete with the local budget DCC efforts in Germany (Trix/Maerklin, Roco, Lenz, Fleischmann). These companies have brand loyalty in Germany and are already well established in DCC. Hornby must already know this. They are relatively unknown in Europe and the US. Besides some of the German starter sets have the similar spec's to the Elite. Some have better.

I think they must intend to expand their DCC range substantially in the UK at some point as there info on the elite says it has a connection for computer control and occupancy detectors. Now the current Hornby offerings are miles off the point where occupancy detectors would be required and the info says that a software upgrade will be needed before this can happen so this tells me that there is more planned which has not been mentioned yet. I suspect they will announce new DCC expansion in the new year so lets wait and see what they offer.

 

[neil_s_wood]

QUOTE It seems biased towards Marklin will it be ok here ?
Yes, the reason for the Maerklin mentions in the manual is that they are by far the biggest manufacturer in Germany and they have to feature prominently if the Ecos is to sell. The Ecos can control DCC. Maerklin Motorola version 1 and 2, Selectrix and a few others. It can also power AC or DC digital, so theoretically you can power thre rail AC Maerklin and two rail DC DCC at the same time.

QUOTE I have got a bit lost with the s88 system in the manual is this a feedback bus?

Yes, these are occupancy detectors which you can use this to trigger points and to use the shuttle feature. They are made by Maerklin or Viessmann or LDT.

QUOTE I was quite impressed with the rest of it, how does it rate as a system?
I reckon it's the best value for money at the moment. Zimo are probably better but considerably more expensive. The Viessmann Commander is the closest competition but it will be more expensive when it is released.

QUOTE There decoders (without sound) at £20 seem reasonable as they are also suitable for coreless motore whist ZTC want £27 for theirs?

Their Lokpilot and Loksound decoders are great. The Lokpilot are on a par with Lenz Gold.

I think I've just repeated what David has said