Woo, after over a year of looking, I found my MTH HO scale Northern Pacific F7. I have big plans for it, but before all of that, I need a good DCC and sound decoder (I got it in DC). Are MTH locomotives compatible with any other decoder manufacturer, or can you only run them with their system?
If you bought the DC version of the loco, then you cna install any DCC decoder you want, and there will be no compatibility issues.
The MTH locos that come with sound will run on DCC, they support most of the common settings youw ould make to a DCC loco, but for full access to every setting you would need to use an MTH DCS system.
Given that there are hundreds of DCC suppliers, all compatible with each other, on one side, and MTH ont he other side - it should be a no-brainer which system to go with. Since MTH does not sell their sound receivers seperately to be able to install them in other locos, you are more or less restricted to running only MTH locos if you use DCS. DCC lets you run any loco you can fit a decoder into, PLUS still run MTH locos.
--Randy
Modeling the Reading Railroad in the 1950's
Visit my web site at www.readingeastpenn.com for construction updates, DCC Info, and more.
rrinker If you bought the DC version of the loco, then you cna install any DCC decoder you want, and there will be no compatibility issues. The MTH locos that come with sound will run on DCC, they support most of the common settings youw ould make to a DCC loco, but for full access to every setting you would need to use an MTH DCS system. Given that there are hundreds of DCC suppliers, all compatible with each other, on one side, and MTH ont he other side - it should be a no-brainer which system to go with. Since MTH does not sell their sound receivers seperately to be able to install them in other locos, you are more or less restricted to running only MTH locos if you use DCS. DCC lets you run any loco you can fit a decoder into, PLUS still run MTH locos. --Randy Thanks Randy, I'm not as familiar with MTH as say, Athearn. Time for the fun part, cracking the thing open to see the kind of connection that I need