gandydancer19 I will add one thing about their herritage units. A friend of mine bought two of them and the speeds match exactly through the entire speed range. We couldn't believe they were matched that well from the factory.
I will add one thing about their herritage units. A friend of mine bought two of them and the speeds match exactly through the entire speed range. We couldn't believe they were matched that well from the factory.
Pretty sure they have sensors like the steam locos so they can accurately do their SMPH control. That's why they match so well - they have feedback loops to keep the motor spinning at exactly the same speed for any given speed step. Not just BEMF, an actual tacho on the motor. Only variance should be the gear tolerences for the part of the mechanism downstream of the sensor, and the tolerance of the electronic components involved in the motor control circuit.
--Randy
Modeling the Reading Railroad in the 1950's
Visit my web site at www.readingeastpenn.com for construction updates, DCC Info, and more.
Thanks again, for all the good info. I might hold off a while.
Elmer.
The above is my opinion, from an active and experienced Model Railroader in N scale and HO since 1961.
(Modeling Freelance, Eastern US, HO scale, in 1962, with NCE DCC for locomotive control and a stand alone LocoNet for block detection and signals.) http://waynes-trains.com/ at home, and N scale at the Club.
My FAs have the newer firmware which supports more CVs for configuration under DCC. lack of readback doesn;t bother me - I don;t really care what the setting USED to be, I want to set it to what I want now.
DO wish they had keep alive. At home they run ok, without the annoying sound drops which causes headaches when both the A and B have sound but the sound stops in only one of them. On the club though, they always have problems, so I end up not using them. They do pull a lot, because they are HEAVY.
They are more detailed than they look at first - on initial inspection it may appear they do not have individual grabs like the P2K FAs, but looks closely and they ARE seperate parts, not molded on.
Once I put Loksounds in my P2K FAs, I might just sell these off.
I own three MTH steamers, two diesels and a GG1.
They are a real mixed bag IMO. All have the annoying startup and shutdown-on-3 thing, which makes one wish they had a keep-alive capability. They can only be programmed on the Main (no readback). They give you no control over the level or character of individual sounds. They use non-standard cab number and reset functions.
The steamers:
1. have only a limited set of user-adjustable DCC functions
2. cannot be firmware-upgraded
3. the single-engine locos are balanced too far back, not centered over the drivers, and tend to climb frogs unless modified. They have poor traction without traction tires.
4. Their drawbars are too long.
The diesels with early restricted DCC firmware can be upgraded from the website, if an MTH programmer is available, to have motor functions about like most modern decoders, such as advanced consist, speed curve control, etc. The remote couplers are funny looking and problematic to use.
To the good: MTH uses a clever scheme to eliminate the multi-wire cable between engine and tender. Synchronized chuff. Loud sound. Heavy. The diesels seem to have good traction. Seem to be good smooth runners on clean track. Lots of auxiliary sounds and gimmicks (that most of us don't care about, similar to the BLI Paragon 2). The long drawbars can usually be replaced with shorter ones.
After some experience with them, I'd only get an MTH if nobody else offered a model I wanted bad enough.
Hal
MY MTH locos are great on DCC and have had no problems with sound or anything, the oldest is about 4 years old. I didn't have the problems with DCC couplers as mentioned above. But, I found them a little long to look prototypical.
Richard
My MTH FAs runs just fine on DCC. They do have their quirks, which can be annoying, like the sound stopping on a power interruption and not restarting until you press the startup function - which is also the shutdown function, so when only one of my AB sets stops making sounds, I have to tip the other off the rails, otherwise all that happens is the silent one starts up and the sound one quiets down.
Some of their 'features' are more gimmicks than anything - the couplers in partcular. Great, you can uncouple via DCC function - but they need to be slammed into the train to couple back up. I swapped out mine for the included Kadees for more reliable operation. I have to cut my cars with a skewer anyway, so why not to cut off the loco, same as all my others?
Thanks for the info. I'm starting to see a lot of MTH locos advertised now.
I think it's actually the newer engines that will run on DCC but require MTH's proprietary DCS systems to access all of the features. Their older engines would not run on DCC at all.
You also can't buy DCS decoders separately, so if you want an engine that MTH does not make to run on DCS, you're out of luck.
Most people like the engines, though.
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.
With some of the older engines - you could not access all of the MTH specific features - but they will run on any DCC layout.
They are noted as being Amp Hogs - so you may run into problems having enough power to run it if you are using one of the Beginner (low amp) type of DCC systems - just an FYI.
The newer engines are much more compatiable with the DCC systems - but I am not sure when this took place as I do not own any of the engines myself
But I have had several run on my layout during my twice monthly OPs Sessions - they seemed to run good!
BOB H - Clarion, PA
I heard or read somewhere that MTH DCC locos are not compatible with other brands of DCC, or something to that effect. Anybody know about that?