Hey everyone! I just wanted to introduce myself. My name is Dave and I am in the process of selling off all my O gauge hirail locos and rolling stock and jumping back into HO scale with a full cannon ball!
I had been going back and forth on the decision for quite a while until I stopped at a local hobby shop this past weekend, Black Friday to be exact, and spotted a Broadway Limited Hybrid Paragon 2 series Pennsy Q2!!! Well, it was love at first sight. The owner took it out of the case and ran it for me and I was blown away at the detail, sound effects and smoke for the price. (Remember I am coming from HiRail O scale where $1200 for a loco is normal and $800 for a used one is a smokin’ deal!)
Anyhow, I put $100 down on Friday and brought her home yesterday. Here’s what she looks like for those who don’t know:
I will be starting a layout thread soon…just wanted to stop in to say hello!!!
Actually I am planning to go full DCC right out of the gate! My local hobby shop is pushing MRC’s Prodigy system pretty hard, specifically the Prodigy Express as a nice starter for me. From what I have seen I like it since I don’t need hand held switch control - going with control panels local to the yards - but my local club to me is using NCE and they are very happy with it and highly recommend it.
A friend of mine at work is pushing Digitrax like crazy so honestly I am not sure how they all stack up? I am very open to opinions since I haven’t pulled the trigger yet.
Thanks for the welcome guys! I am very excited to get started!
Dave, try using both systems before you decide. Go over to your friends place and check out Digitrax and ask the shop owner to set up their MRC system. Nothing beats hands on experience.
You made a good decision by returning to HO scale, and if you model the Pennsy, there’s a ton of new items out there that are great.
I operate with MRC Prodigy Advance on my home HO scale layout, and work with Digitrax on a N scale layout we have at our local rail museum. The Prodigy system is much easier to operate and cheaper. I thought I’d possibly switch to Digitrax until I actually had a chance to try it. I admit it has more applications than the MRC, but I didn’t want to spend a fortune changing to something I’m not comfortable running. I recommend you go with the prodigy Advance system over the Express if you plan on having friends run trains with you. My four sons and I have five throttles to operate our 26’x26’ layout. We can all run our own trains without problems with the system. Anyway, good luck and welcome back to HO!
That is a real sharp scene you got there! Please tell me you have more pics of that layout available! I am thinking I will be doing a LOT of Pennsy but was thinking of naming my layout the Grande Union Central Penn Railroad…[:P] That will just about cover all my favorites! I plan on having two main yard areas - one end being the Western railroads primarily - Union Pacific and Rio Grande, etc… and the other end where I am starting would be Pennsy and NY Central, B&O, C&O, etc…
I love trains so I will basically model snippets of the entire country!
Thanks again, I think you have swayed me toward the MRC Advanced!
Dave
We’ll want to be careful turning this into a “DCC System Flame War” thread… but I agree with the earlier poster. Don’t take your local retailer’s word for it (always remember that he’s trying to move product). Check out a couple of different systems and decide which you like… AND ask yourself which you will ever really use. If you can go to a big train show (the Amherst one in January in Springfield MA comes to mind) where several of the manufacturers will have demos set up, that’s a great way to do this.
That said, I did opt for the MRC Prodigy Express because of both the ease of use and “human engineering” factors: number of buttons, appearance and size of the units, knobs vs. thumbwheels, etc. I’ve since upgraded to the wireless version (if you can afford it, you may want to go this route first, because not having to deal with wires is a great bargain when trying to follow a train around – but get radio, not IR, which is line-of-sight only).
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