Hornby Locomotive Decoder Gains NMRA Warrant

It's amazing what a kick in the wallet(profits) can do.

QUOTE (Richard Johnson @ 14 May 2008, 17:22) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>***As long as you are happy with it then thats just fine... Although I must admit that I really don't consider the TCS decoders as expensive. I'd have to say I've fitted very, very many N scale loco's and the M1 often gives a much better final result, as best running for N scale (especially British N scale) can be hard to achieve and really does need help very often.

I should add too that as I've lobbied strongly and worked on the whole compliance with DCC standards thing without letup for a couple of years now, I'm really very, very pleased to see Hornby go from publicly denying and considering the NMRA standards irrelevant to realising their importance and embracing them, and I sincerely hope that this very positive trend continues, as it'll be good for the hobby as a whole to remove the problems of the incompatibility of their earlier efforts...

It'll be nice to see Hornby continue to evolve positively with their DCC efforts.

Kind regards

Richard

QUOTE (Brian Considine @ 15 May 2008, 10:09) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>....(apart from factory fitted sound), as a DCC'er I do not want to buy a locomotive fitted with a decoder chosen by a bean counter.
That's assuming that pre-fitted decoders will always be budget models, as we've seen so far from Hornby and Bachmann.
If they pre-fitted the equivellent of a Lenz Gold, would that change your mind?

If the Hornby Sapphire decoder turns out to be a good 'un, I'd like to see Hornby fitting that into their better detailed locos, instead of the awful basic model.
Who knows, it may spur the competition to follow suit with a better quality decoder.