what will a railcommand equipped loco do if placed on a dcc layout and vice
versa. can any harm occur to any components? wayne
From my understanding, as said to me by a fellow modeler who uses RailCommand, a locomotive equiped with Rail Command decoder will work on a DCC equiped layout, however, a DCC equiped locomotive will not work on a RailCommad layout. Simple reason is that RailCommand is Analog and DCC is digital
RailCommand is digital and it’s command control, but it’s not DCC compatible. It’s an updated version of Keith Gutierrez’ original CTC-16 concept which pre-dates the NMRA DCC standard. Placing a DCC locomotive on a RailCommand layout will get you nothing and vice versa. No harm should be done to either decoder/receiver.
Think of it like Macintosh vs. IBM PC clones; they have different internal architecture but appear to function in similar ways on the surface.
The Rail Lynx system uses more or less standard DCC decoder architecture but only picks up power from the track, not the command signal. The command signal reaches the decoder via infrared transmissions from the throttle (which works somewhat like a TV remote) to an infrared sensor mounted in the loco. Rail Lynx equipped locos work fine on a layout where RailCommand is running at the same time, since the two systems don’t need to talk to each other.
what will a railcommand equipped loco do if placed on a dcc layout and vice
versa. can any harm occur to any components? wayne
From my understanding, as said to me by a fellow modeler who uses RailCommand, a locomotive equiped with Rail Command decoder will work on a DCC equiped layout, however, a DCC equiped locomotive will not work on a RailCommad layout. Simple reason is that RailCommand is Analog and DCC is digital
RailCommand is digital and it’s command control, but it’s not DCC compatible. It’s an updated version of Keith Gutierrez’ original CTC-16 concept which pre-dates the NMRA DCC standard. Placing a DCC locomotive on a RailCommand layout will get you nothing and vice versa. No harm should be done to either decoder/receiver.
Think of it like Macintosh vs. IBM PC clones; they have different internal architecture but appear to function in similar ways on the surface.
The Rail Lynx system uses more or less standard DCC decoder architecture but only picks up power from the track, not the command signal. The command signal reaches the decoder via infrared transmissions from the throttle (which works somewhat like a TV remote) to an infrared sensor mounted in the loco. Rail Lynx equipped locos work fine on a layout where RailCommand is running at the same time, since the two systems don’t need to talk to each other.