ESU
The ECoS system (50200) can address locos from 1 to 9999. It
considers 1 to 127 short addresses and those from 128 to 9999
as long addresses. Addresses from 10000 to 10239 are not
accessible with the current firmware.
Lenz
Lenz reserves address zero for running locos without decod-
ers. Lenz considers addresses from 1 to 99 as short addresses
and those from 100 to 9999 as long addresses. Addresses from
10000 to 10239 are not accessible.
MRC
While documentation for the Express and Elite systems state
that they recognize long addresses from 1 to 9999, they don’t
include any information on how to talk to a long address less
than 128. They also say that CV 29 is set automatically. So, I
infer that they work just like the ESU ECoS.
NCE
NCE allows you to decide whether an address in the lower
range is short or long. Since NCE doesn’t reserve address zero
for locomotives without decoders, even zero is allowed as a
long address. NCE is the only system I know of that allows you
to use the entire range from 0 to 9999 as long addresses. If you
make all your locos run on long addresses, you have the entire
range from 1 to 127 (short) available for use in consisting – see
Mr. DCC’s Workbench at the end of this column for more on
consisting. Addresses from 10000 to 10239 are not accessible.
The problem addresses: 100 to 127
Okay, these addresses can be a pain if you move between
brands of systems. NCE will allow you to address locos in
this range as either long or short. This allows NCE to run any
decoder setup on any NMRA compliant system. Digitrax, ESU
and MRC call these short addresses. Lenz calls them long
addresses. So, if you set them up as short addresses, you will
be able to move among any system but Lenz. If you call them
long addresses, you will be able to use them on NCE and Lenz
only. See, there is no way to satisfy everybody. I had a set of
Santa Fe FTs that I finally moved from their cab number of 127
to 27 just to get them out of the “danger zone.” But I had to
“NCE is the only system I know of that
allows you to use the entire range from 0 to
9999 as long addresses.”
DCC Impulses Column - 5
MRH-Feb 2014
