Buying a locomotive with DCC sound vs converting a locomotive to DCC


homersimpsonlikestrains said:
Which is more practical: buying a locomotive with DCC and sound built in, or taking an analog locomotive and adding DCC and sound to it?
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I believe there is one other situation to be considered with regard to your question.

If you are thinking about purchasing a specific type of Steam or Diesel locomotive, e.g. one that represents a specific time period in railroad history,
and you have the opportunity to purchase it (and it is just not available with either DCC and/or DCC Sound), then of course your alternative choice is to go with the purchase and then have a reputable DCC Sound installer convert the non-DCC locomotive as per your desire.

With my up-coming layout, I am faced with such a decision.
It largely depends of course on just how much money an individual is willing to spend to get exactly what one wants.;)
 
I have added DCC to maybe 100 diesels. If you want DCC and sound it’s cheaper to buy a DCC sound already equipped diesel. Adding a decoder and speaker plus your time is not worth it IMO!

I have added DCC and sound to 2 steam brass locomotives as that was the only choice.
 
I'll add my vote for buying pre-installed. I've converted nearly all my locos from DC to DCC. It can be done, and not too difficult if you have a inkling of what you're doing with electronics (with most locos, anyway). Or - you can open a box, put the loco on your track and away you go.

I don't run DCC, I run RailPro, so I don't have much of an option but to convert (unless the factory loco has a 9 pin plug - in which case it is literally plug-and-play).
 
I agree with the above, with the caveat that you can afford to buy every engine with DCC/sound. More and more I've been doing that but still buy some DCC ready due to cost consideratoins.
 
Sometimes I don't want the factory installed decoder and I will buy the model as a DCC ready example so I can install the decoder that I want.
 
I model the Burlington Route in the 1940's - '50's, with both steam and diesel locomotives. I have many engines that are DC only, but wanted a few with sound, which really meant DCC, so I have the capability to run either (NOT both simultaneously). My kitbashed steamers came with DC, so I added DCC/sound decoders myself. After the first one, it isn't that difficult. However, the few diesels I have with sound were all purchased with installed sound decoders. One factor the modeller may need to consider is cost. A sound equipped, ready-to-run will generally cost at least $100 more than its DC version. OTOH, depending on the decoder plus keep-alive capacitor and speaker, can run $150.

I have just completed another Burlington M4 2-10-4. It is currently DC only because I don't have a DCC power pack in my shop, and I needed to verify the mechanism working okay. I may invest the money in DCC/sound after tax season is over. In the meantime, it will be run on DC.
 
I ran into something a couple of weeks ago that's worth mentioning. I have a very small layout, and running several sound equipped engines at once can be overwhelming. So, I got a DCC/sound engine from the latest release, and a DCC ready version, so I could add a decoder and have just the one sound-equipped engine.
Well, that didn't work the way I planned it.
The connector for the decoder from the engine does not have a non-sound decoder available so I had to buy a decoder for nearly as much $$$ as I paid for the complete one. Add to that, since it was a sound decoder, I went ahead and got a speaker, too. In this case, I spent nearly double what a sound-equipped engine would cost. Be aware that just because something is "DCC ready", doesn't mean there's a decoder for it.
 

Quoted from bnsf971 in Post #9​

" 'Be aware that just because something is "DCC ready", doesn't mean there's a decoder for it. ' "

Good point!
 
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homersimpsonlikestrains said:
Which is more practical: buying a locomotive with DCC and sound built in, or taking an analog locomotive and adding DCC and sound to it?
Click to expand...
Depends on what you are after.

If you want nothing to do with sound, you don't like the DCC Sound chip installed in the factory model, or in the case of Broadway Limited steam engines you want nothing to do with smoke (or you don't like their decoders in general which I admit are trash) then DCC Ready makes sense.

If you want to add sound later considering you will also have to add in speakers too since most do not come speaker equipped and most likely you will not be able to make a warranty claim if you have a messed up decoder because it was not originally a part of the model, then it makes more sense to pay the full price up front to have the sound and warranty if brand doesn't matter.
 
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