American Hobby Distributors Awarded Lenz Distribution for the North America
Posted on 26. August 2010
Lenz GmbH of Germany, the company that invented DCC and in 1996 made the DCC Standard open source to benefit model railroading, has awarded AHD The Lenz Agency distribution rights for North America. We all appreciate what DCC has done for model railroaders. AHD was selected by Lenz in a competitive Proposal Process involving a number of North American competitors.
From 1996, when DCC was introduced to North America, to the present, the Lenz Agency was masterfully guided and developed by Debbie Ames who is now retiring. Debbie's efforts and the gratuitous donation of the DCC Standard by Bernd Lenz, the company's founder, president and the inventor of DCC must be viewed as the most important milestone in DCC.
Lenz has manufactured more DCC decoders than any other company and to date there have been significantly more than 2,000,000 sold worldwide.
Lenz also invented and introduced "Back Electric Motive Force" technology. BEMF significantly improves decoder low speed control and has now been cloned by all major decoder and sound decoder manufacturers.
More recently Lenz developed three new impressive DCC technologies:
- USP - Uninterrupted Signal Processing
Allows locomotive operations over non conductive track.
LINK - RailCom - Bi-Directional Communication
Lets a decoder talk to the command station for position reporting, speed and direction.
LINK - Asymmetrical DCC
Simple decoder assisted layout automation.
LINK
AHD is proud to be a part of such rich DCC heritage and intends to make every effort to continue the tradition of excellence in support, service and sale of the Lenz fostered by Debbie Ames since 1996. We wish Debbie a happy retirement!
Official Lenz Press Release
Lenz GmbH is pleased to announce the phased retirement of Debbie Ames and the transfer of the management of the Lenz Agency from Tried and True Trains to American Hobby Distributors.
Since 1992 Lenz GmbH has been active in the North American model railroad market. Our DCC technology was used as the basis of the NMRA Digital Command Control standards and we have continued to develop innovative products that have advanced model railroad control.
We formed the Lenz Agency in 1996 to better serve the North American market. For over 14 years Debbie has managed and grown the North American business for us. Her dedication to our company, the Lenz Agency and to model railroading in general has been a great benefit to the Model Railroader.
We have selected American Hobby Distributors to manage our North American Agency and to continue the excellence that Debbie has brought to the Agency.
American Hobby Distributors has a proven track record in customer support and an extensive, comprehensive knowledge of DCC and the model railroading community.
We expect little change for our customers other then the change of address for warranty services and a different set of people on the support line.
We wish Debbie the best of luck as she phases into retirement and welcome the AHD team to the Lenz family.
Bernd Lenz
President Lenz Elektronik GmbH
Peter Rapp
Vice President Lenz Elektronik GmbH
