Regardless of the brand of DCC command station that you personally own, or even if you run in DC, what do you suppose is the most popular brand of DCC?
NCE? Digitrax? Lenz? MRC?
Personally, I own an NCE system, but my sense is that Digitrax is the most popular among model railroaders.
What say you?
Rich
My club uses NCE. It seems to have been a good choice. We had a problem with our DCC system at the 2013 Amherst show in Springfield and one of the guys from NCE came over to our layout and helped us sort it out (someone swapped wires inside the connector end on the control bus wire). I plan on purchasing a NCE system myself once more of my home layout is finished.
I don’t think it’s possible to get an accurate answer, because the DCC companies don’t publish sales figures. Anything else is speculation.
I find that areas of modelers will generally purchase the same brand of DCC system that others in the area run due to the fact that they then have others that can help them through problems
and they will aslo have a throttle to take to others Layouts to use and not have to rely on the Owner of each Layout to have enough Throttles to run trains!
I run Digitrax on my home layout and I probably was the first one in the area to have DCC!
So as most others in the area decided to change over to DCC, went with what I was running!
This way they had their own Throttles to use and I could help them install and trouble shoot problems!
I am now a member of an OPs Group and we will travel to many other layouts all over the area and these other layouts don’t always run Digitrax.
So I have purchased my own NCE Hammerhead Throttle so I now am sure I will have a throttle to use at these other layouts!
As for the largest Manufacturer of DCC systems - Digitrax is probably the largest only because it was one of the very early entries into DCC.
When I was looking at converting - they were well ahead of everyone as they had a Real Radio System and this is what I needed with my large walk-around OPs Based layout.
NCE is probably second and moving up fast.
MRC is a good system despite what some would say as I run on a couple that just work great!
Lenz - just never seemed to catch on in my area as I know of only one - which doesn’t say anything bad about them - it just doesn’t seem to be as popular.
I always read the Layout articles in Model Railroader to see what type of DCC system they are using which is always interesting.
BOB H - Clarion, PA
Informal counting in Great Model Railroads and Model Railroad Planning would tend to support the idea that Digitrax is on top, with NCE second. But that’s a small sample size and also limited to those whose layouts are good enough and/or were able to write an accepted article for MR.
And what about the ones who use NCE to drive the trains but install Digitrax for the signal and detection side of things? How do you count them? There are several on this forum who do just that, and there is a large club locally that was recently featured in MR who does the same. And what about the lub I belong to, we have essentially two Digitrax systems, one to runt he trains and one to run the signals. Do we count as 2 Digitraxes?
I’m willing to bet that if you grouped all their systems together, MRC may have sold more DCC systems than anyone. Some of those would be 3 systems to the same person as they grew their layouts and the older MRC systems didn;t scale, you had to buy a completely new one to get more features. And lots of people were using MRC power packs for their DC layout and went to MRC when they converted to DCC.
Bottom line, pick one, they all work, and generally are reliable. There’s a reason there are a lot of Digitrax systems installed alongside some other for signals and detection though - they still have the most capable control bus, and there are more components (Digitrax branded, third party, and DIY) that work witht he Digitrax bus than all the others combined. This despite the Digitrax bus not being 100% open (commercial vendors must pay a fee for the rights to distribute Loconet compatible products, and they need to be certified by Digitrax).
–Randy
I doubt the information is out there. It would be an interesting survey for Kalmbach to run. Just a check box, sumarized in a graph, no salesmanship.
But the problem there is it would only capture members of the forums here. Or if on the main Kalmbach site, then pretty much only subscribers who also happen to be online. Which is less than all subscribers. Same problem if one of the otehr magazines, paper or electronic, would do the same thing. Maybe if they ALL did it, with the same options, and they were all combined - though there are people who visit here as well as those otehr sites - and several not associated with any publication as well. Still limiting the source set to those modelers who are online - granted I’d expect a larger percentage of DCC users would have some online presence vs the overall group of model railroaders.
–Randy
I didn’t say it would be statisticaly acurate, I said it would be interesting.
I have tracked the various Yahoo DCC Groups (MFG specific) for some time (as I needed to do a stats project) and once the project was over I just kept on with it - as it was certainly interesting to watch how the values changed over many years).
What I did was at the beginning of each month I would mark down the total number of members of the various groups and graph them out watching how they trend.
While quite a number would use these numbers to state the Yahoo DCC Group with the highest number of members had the most problems and therefore not really that popular.
Others would come up with their own scenario to show their brand was better as they stated that so few were on the Yahoo Group ment it was a big seller.
Stats can be made to read anything and this what the purpose of my project was.
But in looking over the current number of members per each Yahoo Group
Digitrax is #1
NCE is #2 - with slightly more than half as many members
Lenz is #3
MRC is #4
Roco #5
EasyDCC is #6
Zemo #7
Bachmann #8
So using the analigy that the Yahoo Group with the least members (being these Groups are HELP Groups) and those with the least means that, that Brand is the easiest to use - therefore the ASSumed more popular (which is are REAL STRETCH)!
It was mentioned on one of the YHOO Goups that with Digitrax having the most members - it therefore must be having the MOST PROBLEMS!
While it might have been done Tongue In Cheek the group stating this was next on the list.
Again using that analigy - they must also have a lot of problems being second!
As I stated above - Stats can be made to read anything! 
As to which MFG is more popular - ask any one that owns a system and it is the one they are using! - Which therefore is also the best one!
BOB H - Clarion, PA
Before purchasing my Digitrax Super Chief, I downloaded the manuals from several Mfg websites. I determined that at that moment in time, Digitrax had the greatest capability and expandability. With that capability comes geatest complexity. I am sure that many people would be confused and intimidated by that complexity. As I have grown with my layout, I have come to apreciate that complexity. Not everyone will. Help each other forums probably reflect the complexity.
I love my Digitrax. People who have difficulty with complexity might not. I love the fact that I have not yet found anything it cannot do.
I don’t think this is a horse race, to be decided by photo-finish if necessary. Digitrax, NCE, and Lenz are the big three, although Lenz is there more because of it’s global rep than US sales. Investing in any of them will prevent being orphaned in case of a industry shakeout.
Numbers don’t really tell the tale here about what’s best for YOU. Try 'em all for that.
Digitrax is big, because they’ve been around a long time and sold a bunch of systems, almost a de facto standard many places, as it is here. In our NMRA division, everyone else is Digitrax. I’m the lone NCE user.
Personally, I find very little that is intuitive about Digitrax. It seems designed for those comfortable finding their way around a computer, which is a lot of people but not everyone. True, I only use it at other people’s places, so that likely accounts for me being continuously baffled by it.
What’s telling is that all the Digitrax users seem equally baffled much of the time, asking each other, “How do you do this?” when we are operating elsewhere, so they’re just like me in needing to ask how to do basic things. And when they come here to operate on my unfamiliar NCE throttles? Rarely a question about throttles. I think that speaks volumes about NCE’s ease of use. I prefer to spend extra effort to learn about running my RR, not running my throttle. YMMV
Based on research I did 18 months ago, using published layout profiles:
Digitrax: 35%
NCE: 32%
CVP: 13%
Lenz: 12%
MRC: 5%
There seems to be general agreement that Digitrax is the most popular DCC system, followed closely by NCE.
Rich
Well, there’s talk of features and adaptability, intuitivity, reliability. But in the end something is going south. Then it’s customer support…From my experience with decoders, IMHO, it’s Digitrax, TCS (not a complete system), NCE, MRC. I will not comment on Lenz or others I have no experience with. System wide I started with MRC, had stability issues, and was talked out of it and into Digitrax by PhD. Electrical engineering professor (as I’ve posted elsewhere) whose specialty is…pulse width modulation control (that’s dcc)! He’s never steered me wrong and again, I would agree the Panama City crew designs the cleanest waveform hardware! No regrets here.
Randy,
When I was struggling over the idea of going to DCC, one of the things I researched was the systems used by the folks whose layout appeared in Great Model Railroads. I have all the issues, and after compiling the numbers, it came down to Digitrax, followed by NCE, with all the others significantly behind.
It didn’t take long to figure out that it that Digitrax or NCE would work best for me. Their components were readily available at discounts, lots of folks used them successfully (esp on this forum), and they both had all the bells and whistles in their product line.
I had tried out NCE, and liked the handheld controller over the Digitrax. But, I could more easily understand the operational aspects of the Digitrax. Frankly, the design of the grey controllers/boosters swayed me over.
So I bought two of the systems, and they work great and I have no complaints. But ironically, all the decoders I picked up since then have been NCE.
Anyway, I don’t think its hard to imagine that either NCE or Digitrax is the sales leader. But what really matters is how many of those sales resulted in satisfied users…
I use Digitrax and I am satisfied.
When our large HO scale club wanted to switch to DCC control many years ago, I downloaded the user manuals from every system that was then available.
One of our primary “wants” was radio control, which Digitrax did NOT offer at that time, but NCE and CVP did.
MRC was way behind the power curve in every respect, and the cost of a Lenz system made it untouchable.
When we considered initial installation cost, expandability, customer support, and upgrades, we went with NCE.
Another consideration at that time was that NCE and CVP could have thieir main CPU upgraded by the user because the chip was socketed, but Digitrax had to be sent back to the factory to be upgraded.
If we were making the purchase decision today, Digitrax might be our first choice because of their LocoNet capability for signals, etc., but NCE has served us very well over the years.
I do believe Digitrax came out with their radio system before NCE did.
The red herring though is “sending it back for upgrades” - the architecture of Digitrax is completely different from everyone else’s, in that it’s a peer to peer system, not a master/slave design. So the ‘brains’ are not entirely within the command station. There only ever was one upgrade for the DCS100, because of a bug unknown at the time that did not allow functions higher than F8 to work - at the time, F8 was as high as the NMRA standard went so there was no real way to validate higher than F8 - the packet format had not been specified yet. Additional extensions, to the now standard F29, the command station with Digittrax does nothing for that, it merely generates the packet and puts it on the rails, the F13+ commands are all generated in the throttle.
This is why I greatly dislike those comparison charts at Tony’s, the information isn’t completely correct and there’s absolutely no context given so you look at that column that says you have to send it back for upgrades and view that as a negative. I really wish Digitrax hadn;t given in to the pressure and made all their latest devices field upgradable (just flash new code in them, not even a chip replacement - so now even easier). It’s only made it possible to ship products before they are as thoroughly tested because hey, we can always publish an update if we find a problem. It caused a lot fo problems with the Duplex radio system and there was an issue with the Zephyr Xtra that more than likely never would have been there if they held off and tested more with the idea that it wouldn’t be convenient to fix later. I’d rather something be right and arrive later than have it now only to find a problem down the road, but then I’m not most consumers.
–Randy
I have to argue the point about NCE having Radio before Digitrax!
Digitrax had it as did Lenz (but Lenz used a Telephone handset)
The main reason I wnet with Digitrax was the RADIO!
This was back in 1998!
I became a Dealer then to be sure I could get the DCC products as the companies were still getting sorted out!
SO - effectvely DIGITRAX was first with a stand alone RADIO - and NOT using a PHONE! Easy DCC was the next one with RADIO! (NOT BACHMANN EASYDCC)!
BOB H - Clarion, PA
When my club bought a Digitrax Chief in 1998 it was Radio. I recall at the time NCE was tether only and radio came few years later. As for upgrade we never had to upgrade the command station since date of purchase. The system started as a simplex radio supporting 8 functions with a DT100 throttle. Now we can run duplex radio and have access to 29 functions all this without the need of an upgrade to the command station.