Cjcrescent
Master Mechanic
I believe that the pretty much universal compatibility of DCC has accomplished a good deal of that. Remember the lawsuit over the BEMF that stifled DCC development about 5-8 years ago between mth and in particular BLI. mth claimed that it had a patent that gave it the right to use the BEMF as a method of speed control, that said it could have speed steps in increments of one scale mile and hour, which came to IIRC 120 speed steps and no one had anything better. Trouble was the patent application did not show any prior art, which for the application to be legitimate, it has to. The court ruled against mth with 2 rulings. One, since they showed no prior art in their application and BLI proved that there was, the patent was disallowed, and Two, since there were more DCC companies who had speed steps of 14, 28, and 128 steps, their claim as having the ability to register changes in 1 smph differences wasn't unique enough to have the case stand on that alone. That was the first big loss mth faced. I don't believe that except for the suit against Korea Brass, which backrupted Lionel, mth has won many suits since. And that forced bankruptcy on Lionel allowed it protection from the lawsuit damages, which was $35 million, and that was money Lionel never had, the courts did give them enough protection so all mth got out of Lionel was some designs.
I think that when folks who bought mike's trains found that they weren't originally DCC compatible they either returned them for refund, or ripped the electronics out and replaced with DCC components and told mth about it. I also think that the company was in dire straits financially and had to add this compatibility just to stay alive.
IMHO, until mth offers FULL DCC compatibility, and the kinds of detail that a scale modeler wants on their locos, mth will never be anything more than a very minor player in HO. At one time I counted the number of manufacturers that actually followed the NMRA on their DCC standards and RP's stood at 85 different companies. There is to date only 1 maker of dcs and that is mike.
I think that when folks who bought mike's trains found that they weren't originally DCC compatible they either returned them for refund, or ripped the electronics out and replaced with DCC components and told mth about it. I also think that the company was in dire straits financially and had to add this compatibility just to stay alive.
IMHO, until mth offers FULL DCC compatibility, and the kinds of detail that a scale modeler wants on their locos, mth will never be anything more than a very minor player in HO. At one time I counted the number of manufacturers that actually followed the NMRA on their DCC standards and RP's stood at 85 different companies. There is to date only 1 maker of dcs and that is mike.
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