ModelRailroadForums.com is a free Model Railroad Discussion Forum and photo gallery. We cover all scales and sizes of model railroads. Online since 2002, it's one of the oldest and largest model railroad forums on the web. Whether you're a master model railroader or just getting started, you'll find something of interest here.
if a seller says not dcc ready, does that mean that the engine can not be converted. confussed. engine is a n scale lifelike sw 9.i guess i am a newbee at this.thank for any help i can get.
It does not mean that the engine cannot be converted, it's just that you have to do the conversion yourself. An engine that is "DCC ready" either has a circuit board that can be directly replaced with a decoder or an "NMRA plug". You remove the DC circuit board from the connector and replace it with a decoder that comes with a compatible plug.
If I could add to what has been said, the term "DCC ready" in the industry encompasses everything between (hold out your hands, separate them by about three feet). The term is almost a joke, depending on your experience with a particular manufacturer's claims for their modern models.
Once or twice decoder installers have found that engines sold as DCC ready were actually dangerous to decoders because the motors were not isolated from the frames. In order to do this, it meant a lot of extra work, including acquiring and installed nylon mounting screws after the motor had been sat and fixed on a pad of electrical tape or something else suitable for physical isolation from the frame. In most such cases, the wire leads between the wheel pickups and the motor had to be severed, while in others an entire circuit board must be removed in order to make room for the decoder. Some of them come with a plug meant for X-number of pins in a decoder's lead, while the decoder one had acquired required a different connector..
..and so on.
It's a bit of a crap shoot, but I hear that it is getting better as time goes on.
(disclaimer: I have never installed a decoder, but this is what I have understood from reading countless threads with observations about this subject.)
There's another thread farther down where I lay out a few of the scenarios where the term "DCC Ready" applies. The bottom line is that almost all locos are "DCC Ready" to some degree. The only ones that really aren't are the ones with open frame motors or those Bachmann Spectrum diesels with the split frames. Those mean a whole lot more work to install a decoder.
