@bigkid posted:It was never a good idea to have 2 different systems from the point of the user base. In the scale world if you had had incompatible systems it would have been a mess and command control likely would be a niche product. The NMRA making it a standard allowed DCC to thrive IMO.
There is an analogy right now with the EV market ( and please, no comments of whether you think EVs are evil or great ,that is not the point). One of the issues right now is there is no standard for the charging heads when you plug in. As a result there can be problems with charging stations,esp if you want rapid charge.
Unfortunately for us we don't have that. TMCC came first, and by the time PS 2 came along there was no bridging the gap,for a variety of reasons we all know.
They could have done what DCC did and have basic control functions like speed control, couplers and the like be the standard, then compete on extensions ( like speed control steps or advanced sound).
It worked bc people had no choice unless to stay with one vendor. The DCS to TMCC/legacy functionality made it a little less painful,but you still had to buy both systems.
One thing that time had shown is that proprietary systems generally don't fare well. I like the Apple Mac computers, but because they kept it a closed system globally it is dwarfed by windows. In the computer world proprietary large scale computers are a niche, the dominant systems in almost everything are running Linux or other unix variants, the hardware is pretty much Intel based servers.
Obviously this is all academic, it is what it is. With even cab 1l systems in short supply, you do what you can,thankfully at the least they run conventional other than lc. It is also nice the universal lc remote and the app can control any of the engines mentioned as well.
All very good points and a lot of us were already expressing concerns with two independent systems 20+ years ago. Then what does Lionel do, they come out with Lionchief and now we have a third proprietary communication system. And unlike TMCC/Legacy, the communication library is not published for open use. So you must buy or use Lionel proprietary controllers, bases, and (free) apps to operate these devices. The LC Universal remote is only universal to Bluetooth and LC equipped Lionel locomotives, it's not universal to every Lionel product. Everyone sees "Bluetooth" and thinks it is universal but it's not. Bluetooth is a wireless protocol that carries (Lionel's) proprietary communications.
Calling Lionchief, Legacy/TMCC, and DCS compatible with each other is a bit of a misnomer. While they can all share the same power source, you must purchase "handshaking" equipment to get them to function together within the same environment from the same controller.
It would have been easy and cheap enough to incorporate DCC into Lionel O gauge products many years ago but not doing so forces us to buy and/or use Lionel products to operate their trains. They do it in other scales, so why not O? Using an open standard like DCC and incorporating it into your electronics allows you to choose the system you want and run trains from any manufacturer because you would then be using a true universal communication standard.
