DCC engines at a sensible price

[simong]

Hornby have just announced their 2014 range which includes DDC sound railroad locos for £60-£85, now if soneone did this in N gauge I would convert to DDC straight away!

[Sprintex]

Dream on, the 00 market is vastly bigger than that for N gauge so they can afford to sell cheaper because they'll shift more units


Paul

[brbluewill]

we can but dream personally i don't mind the extra for dcc

[Geoff]

When will that day come cheap sound for N Gauge..

Probably never as we are the rip off the N Gauge lot 

[MikeDunn]

DDC sound railroad locos for £60-£85

The first thing that springs to mind is - are they any good or are they like their DCC chips ...

[EtchedPixels]

When will that day come cheap sound for N Gauge..

Probably never as we are the rip off the N Gauge lot 

Digitrax have done cheap N sized 8bit sound decoders for a long time. They are ok-ish for diesels if used with a decent speaker for diesel/electric but for steam there is no back EMF so they chuff rather too much like Ivor the Engine.

There are some new Digitrax ones out (not yet in N size) which are 16bit and seem way better. It'll be interesting to see how they price up.

Also remember part of the pricing here is that Hornby are factory fitting them, that means no manual, no big plastic box, no big dealer markup, no returns through installation errors, no support helpline and a lot less stock needs to be carried.

[johnlambert]

I think Dapol's DCC fitted locos are pretty good value.  The cost of a chipped loco is (as you'd hope) less than the cost of buying loco and the same chip separately.  And I know it will work straight out of the box on DC or DCC, which is something I struggle to achieve when fitting chips myself.

It would be nice if the other major manufacturer of UK outline N-gauge locos would do factory-fitted DCC but I suspect the majority of the market would rather be free to fit its preferred chip rather than pay for a chip that they don't want.

[McRuss]

Hello John,

I've got some other expirience with the Dapol factory fitted DCC locos. These summer I ordered a factory fitted class 27. The first one got problems with the gear, and I returned it to Hattons. They send me a replacement. These did run very well on DC, and also on DCC with the adress set to 3, but when I tried to change the adress to a 4 digit adress, the loco stuttered. There where no DCC Chip instructions with the loco. I asked Dapol for help, but I haven't received an answer. Then I contacted DCC Supplies, and they told me that they are not sure, but they thought it would be a Gaugemaster chip. And then I asked here and at Rmweb. Here I got profund help. In the end I changed the DCC chip in the loco. It now got an Bachmann 6 pin chip and the loco runs good. I put the Gaugemaster chip in another loco, and there it is the same, on a two digit adress it runs good, but when you change to a  4 digit one, stuttering. My conclusion out of these is that I won't buy any Dapol factory fitted locos in the future. I will buy the trusty Bachmann chips, and fit them in the locos.
For the sound, I own a 00 Bachmann Sound class 25. The sound is great, but after some time in storage, it seems that the sound effects are not longer synchron. Especially when you run the loco for a while and then it is braked down to a halt. The loco stops, but the sound is going on as if the loco is still at full speed.

Markus