These little gems have been on the market for around two years and yet no one ever reports on them. My two examples arrived this morning, but SWMBO had other duties in mind so I was not able to run until this evening. First impression was nice with the exception of the exceedingly shallow footstep along the open section of the car. This no doubt is to accomodate the infamous R1 rule.
Set upon the rail and the cars proceeded at a steady pace until the first insulated frog and then no motion. I applied more power and edged them a little and they proceeded at a steady pace, with the lights flickering at every switch frog. I had quickly checked and had noted all wheel electrical pickup and decided to investigate the momentary loss of power pickup. First impression was that several carbon brush pickups had been ommitted in production. Further investigation showed that the brushes were seized inside their cases. One was on the motor block which required disassembly. On reassembly, care must be taken to insert the brass bearings on each axle into the recess in the top half of the motor block. The pickups on the trailing truck are accessible after two watchmaker size screws are removed and the lower cover taken off.
After rectification, the little gems behaved as I would have liked from the beginning. Fault-free snail’s pace running over frogs is now possible. As power is initially applied the car begins to move off. At around 7.5 volts the marker, headlight and tail lights illuminate at a realistic glow and the car moves at a ‘scale’ speed. As power is increased, the ‘constant brightness bulbs’ glow an unrealistic brightness matching the headlamp for intensity. For night time running, once greater than 7.5 volts is used, the car is like a Christmas tree. At 7.5 volts the lights are the right intensity and the car speed is acceptably smooth and slow. One thing missing which I do not believe is not fitted to the prototype is internal lighting. Internal lighting would tend to lessen the brilliance of the four marker lamp LEDs.
Final assessment is that they are well made, although the advertising blurb about being masterpieces is a little over the top. They look nice, but are definately very toylike. With the power pickup issues corrected, the cars behave brilliantly, travelling smoothly at a snail’s pace through my numerous Aristo wide-radius switches, without a any loss of power pickup. At a snail’s pace both cars travel at the same speed. As voltage increases, one car is notably quicker than the other car for a given voltage.
