Bachmann and other Decoders on plain DC?

[xdford]

Hi all,

Hope this has not been covered earlier and I did put this on the DCC forum but I did not get that many answers to answer the possibilities...

Can Bachmann decoder units be used OK on plain DC? Also Digitrax and NCE?  I believe there is a problem with Hornby chips also.

This query came up at the club last night from someone else who runs DC but likes the look of a Bachmann offering on DCC... I did not try to talk him out of it!

Regards and TIA

 

Trevor

[jeffrey-wimberly]

Absolutely! I have decoders from all three of the companies you listed and they run OK on DC. Bachmann and Digitrax decoders come from the factory with the DC function set to on by default. I'm pretty sure NCE decoders do also.

[CSX_road_slug]

I believe all decoder mfgr's have dual mode enabled as a factory default.  But one thing I've discovered is that leaving the DC (a.k.a. analog) capability turned on, was causing some of my locos to act strange when I ran them on DCC.  Example: One of them had a tendency to stall, then suddenly run at full throttle in the opposite direction (and be unresponsive to decoder commands).  Disabling the dual-mode capability eliminated this nasty habit.