FAQ:Why Does a Consist Created on an NCE system not work with Digitrax?
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You've created a Basic Consist with your NCE DCC system, but when you take it to another layout, which uses a Digitrax DCC system, it will not work.
It comes down to addressing: Digitrax follows the convention that any address below 128 is a Primary Address. NCE's interpretation is that Extended Addresses can occupy the same space.
By adding a leading zero to the address, an NCE command station will create an Extended Address and write that to the multifunction decoder. For example, 100 is a Primary address, 0100 is an Extended address.
A Basic Consist is created by writing the same address to all the multifunction decoders in the lashup. If the address created on an NCE system is an Extended Address below 128, it will function perfectly on another NCE DCC system, but will not work with most other DCC systems. This also applies to a single locomotive address.
TL, DR: Not all DCC systems handle Extended Addressing in the same manner.