# New to HO Trains



## eb5775 (Jan 22, 2013)

I'm wondering about mixing and matching different brands of HO trains. I have a Holiday Rails from Life-Like. Are there other makes and models that will work with the set I have? 
New to this and loving it!


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## cv_acr (Oct 28, 2011)

Pretty much any brands of cars and engines should be compatible with each other, although older cheaper stuff (especially if you pick up secondhand stuff) may have older style couplers. There's two main types of couplers, and these are NOT compatible with each other, but couplers can usually be replaced with varying degrees of difficulty.


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## eb5775 (Jan 22, 2013)

Thanks Chris!


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## cv_acr (Oct 28, 2011)

Note that different models of engines from different manufacturers may run at different speeds due to different motors, gearing or electronics, so if you want to run multiple engines together at the head of a train on a simple analogue DC power, it will work better to have similar engines from the same manufacturer.

Using DCC there's more tweaking you can do to speed curves in the decoder (basically telling the electronics how much actual power to provide to the motor at each particular throttle position) but that's more advanced stuff.


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## MarkVIIIMarc (Oct 19, 2012)

I have code 100 track so I have not experienced this but I heard the old cookie cutter wheels are not great on code 83 track


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