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Reply to "Controlling and Automating MTH DCS engines from Train Controller - Proof of Concept - Map of TMCC to DCS added"

Congratulations. For those not familiar with the history, when TMCC came out in about 1996, several creative people made  equipment that would retrofit older locos with TMCC.  Train America Studios had the UCUB and Ed Bender had the TrainBrain if I recall correctly.  Lionel pretty much let them do this without a formal license of the technology.  I have a few postwar type locos with these.

In 2000 MTH produced PS2 locos and in 2002 they came up with the TIU/DCS remote, but made it clear that anyone trying to reverse engineer the system and sell retrofits would be receiving threatening letters from their lawyers.  That's been the state of affairs since. But with MTH essentially dissolving as a company, it will be interesting whether the new DCS company will license folks to do the sort of the thing you have done, but in a commercial way.  One can hope .  There's probably no business case for continuing this proprietary and restrictive approach I'd guess.  It may well have constrained MTH's market in the past, since many folks did not want to have to learn/buy two systems, and the TMCC/Legacy systems had a six year head start.

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