Inkaneer, I'm an N-TRAKer too, and most people just don't understand what we expect from our equiptment. At the National Train Show in St Louis, we ran 16 hours a day for two days straight and 10 and 6 hours two other days. The TRUE miles I put on my Kato SD-40-2's is probably amazing. And most people don't reialize how much equiptment N-Traker's buy. We've got 5 or 6 115 unit coal trains in the club(at over $2000 each), 100+ car unit grain trains(i've got one), pasenger trains, my 80+ car tank train, and other guys have other unit trains, not to mention the plain old mixed trains we run. I forgot who Atlas sent to OKC, but he smiled when he saw my Atlas engines running still after three hours on the layout. In 25+ years, I've never had to put in brushes or worn out a motor or a mechanism. Didn't mean to hi-jack a thread, but N-TRAKers can tell you what works and what doesn't. BTW, my LL 2-8-8-2 pulls pretty good...about 50 cars on the level after it was broken in. I wish it would do like the prototype and "clear the yard", but it's not bad.
