Greetings all,

Possible future user considering switching to RailPro but I have a couple edge.cases I am curious how to handle but also looking for feedback on shat people have seen.

Background:
I used to be a part of a HO club that used a NCE DCC system. I have about 40 HO locos I've acquired over the years, about half DC, a quarter DCC and the remaining quarter DCC-sound. Current use case is for a home floor layout with my kids that we set-up and take down, possibly getting into a club again,and ultimately long term building a large basement sized layout with multiple power districts, signal blocks, etc.

Why I'm considering RailPro:
1) ease of use. I can definitely get behind the idea of spending.ore time enjoying and less time programming. Also, with you g kids simpler is better. That being said, I think my kids are capable of at least operating a NCE ProCab at a basic level; if be more worried about them accidentally messing with the programming.
2) intelligent load sharing/loco to loco communication. This is a game changer for how I want to operate, think multiple loco lashups on the point plus mid-train and/or end of train helpers.
3) Wireless control out of the box and programming.

Concerns/questions/edge cases:
1) how well so you see the load sharing work in practice? Considering a possible consist could be 4 on the point, two mid train helpers, 2 end train helpers, ~96 cars long, going up a scale 2.5-3% grade through both straight and winding sections. How would this work with an un-motored cab car?
2) RailPro is a closed ecosystem/lack of a standard. While I understand that RailPro locos work on DCC and you can fully control them using an HC-3, how do they play in practice with DCC consists running other trains, and in trains mixed with DCC only locos? What is the general health of the RailPro ecosystem (haven't seen an update in approximately a year) and what does the community think about the lack of visibility for the ecosystem? This kind of boils down to that without a standard other than DCC, and not being able to program a RailPro module from a DCC system, if something happens to RailPro (God forbid) then a conversion back to DCC becomes a "when" vice "if" question (not that anyone would want that to happen, but no longer being able to get modules of any type would kill growth, especially vs DCC where if the name thing happened, only the system itself might need replacing).
3) how would you go about converting a loco with dual motors? I have a DDA40x with matched motors and sound decoders, is this something that a single RailPro module could take over or would it require two and if two, could they be programmed as a unit or would they have to be individually programmed and always consisted together?
4) how do the modules handle articulated steam engines and syncing the chuffs? Something that can rapidly break my immersion is seeing an articulated steam engine (I have two cab forwards) chuffing along with only a single chuff or seeing the chuffs wildly mismatch the speed the loco is going.
5) Cost. I hate bringing it up, but it's also inescapable. With silent decoders/modules, it's no contest in terms of getting a basic decoder into every loco. Sound is much closer but seems to come with trade-offs in quality as well as capabilities (sound specific features, not looking at RailPro system capabilities).
6) Availability. No hobby stores near me carry RailPro or have any experience with it. Not that they have stock of NCE system parts above a PowerCab but they do have experience with it an usually a good number of decoders in stock. Most of the online shops only seem to have small numbers of anything RailPro in stock and are slow to restock.

I look forward to any insight that y'all can offer.

Hey All,

I have an old Athearn GP35 with the original motor and it's running with a LM-3S module just fine.

However, I have replaced most of the original Athearn motors with newer can motors since they are quieter, smoother and more efficent. You can buy generic motors with flywheels off eBay in lots of six for $12-15 each. Don't spend $30+ each on newer Athearn motors. They're just not worth it.

I also forgo the Athearn motor mounts when replacing motors on old blue box locos. I just build mounts out of sheet styrene and glue in with Goop.

Rob S.

Is it the same two loco's that have been "lost" on the two HC's?

Have they disappeared from the select screen (with the loco icons) and the loco list screen (where you use the knob to scroll through the loco's)?

Can you remember doing anything like deleting pictures, making changes, doing updates when the loco's disappeared?

As the find product procedure doesn't find them that means they do exist on the HC still. I don't think accidentality password protecting them would loose them from the list Ultimately, if we can't work out what happened you many need to remove all the detected products from the HC and re-detect everything.

- Tim

This is my first post to RPUG and I have two HC-2 throttles.  They both have the same issue where two of locomotives have disappeared from the list.  I've tried the find product icon on both throttles and in all cases the response is no product found.  Has anyone else experienced this problem and has found a way to resolve it?  Thank you on advance for your help, Kevin Leddy

No worries Espee, these were the easiest converts, no milling required. I was surprised.

I did sand the speaker baffle a tad also. Those we Cruse Engineering sugar cubes 13 x 18 x 5mm ... I sanded them down to like 3 mm thick.

Fun fun fun, I get a thrill making them Railpro savvy. - Good times.