the National Model Railroad Association set the standards for all model railway products. As you may have gathered, sometimes these are not adhered to by companies :razz:
basically if a digital system is NMRA compatible it will work with every digital chip or controller under the sun that is badged as NMRA compatible, and thats most of them (excepting Zero 1 and the old Airfix systems)
However the Hornby system is neither compatible or compliant, which means that its going to work to a point. If you took a Lenz chip for example and ran it on the Select or Elite, you'd destroy the chip very quickly, because the voltage peaks (something like 60 a second!) are way outside the normal limits of such chips. Would you believe that each of these split second 40-60 odd peaks max out at anything up to 60 volts? NMRA standards demand a total of 22 volts per peak, so although it will work, its not "compatible" in the literal sense. A decoder designed to use 28 volts tops running on wildly varying voltages up to 60 volts is going to leave a very unpleasent odour after a while running.
I have always been fascinated as to how digital systems work and develop and so am always interested when things like this happen. As I understand it, Hornby have submitted the Elite for compliance testing with the NMRA test team, so things should look up. I think when Hornby get rid of this bug bear, they'll have a system to be proud of. Hell its surpassed Zero 1 as it is! Where you could only have 16 locos, you now get 99 odd!
The Hornby System works well, when its only with Hornby digital equipment.