Thanks all for the feedback and the warm welcome. I realize now I could have provided a little more detail in my original post. What I meant by vendor compatibility had specifically to with electrical compatibility between brands. Most of what I was looking for has already been answered. If I understand correctly the volts being delivered to the track are in AC and then get converted in the engine to DC and this is consistent through all of the O gauge brands.
In my test scenario I have a small oval MTH Realtrax layout (10 pieces of track) with the MTH Z-750 power supply connected. According to my multimeter the rails are getting about 19.7 volts max with the MTH remote cranked to full. One of the trains I inherited was a 4-6-0 steamer MTH Protosound 2.0 that does run but is slow to start and needs a lot of power delivered to the track before it will get going. I'll revisit the track cleaning effort tomorrow with some denatured alchohol and see if that improves things. I figured if the steamer runs with a lot of power then the Lionel and Williams should run as well but perhaps the wheels need some attention or maybe the MTH is more forgiving, not sure but will perform due diligence. Also while on the topic I have a pair of prewar Lionel Lines 4-4-2 steamers that I would like to test - is there anything I should be concerned about here?
