(I tried to post in reviews section, wouldn’t take, just kept saying error on page)
This is just a short review, but since there are none, what the heck.
I got mine for $269 and was happy about it. Street price is quite a bit lower than suggested retail.
It looks great and runs smoothly. It is not tolerant of track with peaks and dips. The long wheelbase is rigid, and after running diesels with 2 wheelsets per truck, it seems finicky.
The reality is that it points out bad trackwork. I spent 1/2 a day lying on my belly, and watching the boiler. Whenever it rocked forward or backward, I could tell track levelling was in order.
After fixing all of those places on my free-floating track, it ran very well. It is less tolerant of bad trackwork than my Aristo mallet, and more tolerant than my Aristo RDC, to give a couple of reference points.
Pulling power is great, and I suppose you could weight it a bit more for even more pulling power, since the wheels run on ball bearings.
Early run units had problems with loose screws and drivers. The problem is in assembly and a bit of quality control.
The wheels and axles are a taper fit with no locking mechanism other than a bit of loctite and the taper fit. If the screws don’t keep the taper fit tight, you have loose screws and loose drivers.
One assembly problem seems to be that the loctite set up before the taper fit was mechanically secure. This can be fixed by removing, cleaning, reapplying the loctite and tightening (right away) the assembly.
One other assembly problem is where axle protrudes from the wheel. Then the screw locks down on the axle without applying sufficient pressure to the wheel, thus no pressure on the taper fit. The best way to fix this is either removing the wheel, grinding a bit off the axle and reassembling, or if the mismatch is severe, getting a new driver so that this condition does not occur.
Checking the loco for this latter problem and correcting it right away will make all owners happy.
(for the record, I have not had either problem on my Mikado or Mallet)
Greg Elmassian