Between building my new house and preparing for a move, I haven't done anything train related (other than forums) in almost a year. My 5-1/2 year old son and I had a chance to spend some quality time together tonight, so I decided to set up a HO oval in the basement so he could run some of his trains. Well, as long as I had some HO track down, why not break out some of my NIB Bachmann On30 stuff and give it a test run. I've had a Shay with a Soundtraxx decoder for a couple of years, but I also have several other pieces that had never been out of the box. First, my son ran some of his Spectrum HO steam for a couple of hours. It ran smooth and quiet, and the level of detail is excellent for the price. I was fairly impressed. Then, it was finally the kid's bed time, which meant dad got to play for a while. I ran my 2-6-0 with a baggage car and two coaches first. Then, the Climax with skeleton log cars, and finally the 0-4-2 Porter with a couple V-dump cars. Right out of the box, with no break-in, the stuff ran awesome. I've loved my Shay since day one, but this was a pleasant surprise. Whatever Bachmann is doing, I hope they keep it up. I'm going to order the Consol and a Forney soon, and the new 4-4-0 looks unbelievable. Watching the pistons and side rods work on the Porter is a hoot. Of course, the mechs on the Shay and Climax are awesome. The 2-6-0, for being basically a "train set" loco is as smooth as warm butter. And they're all so quiet. The rolling stock is very smooth too. All I could hear was the clickety-clack of the metal wheels on the rail joints. I can't wait 'til I have time to install the Soundtraxx decoder in the Climax, because I love the one in the Shay. I took the extra time to add the cam for sound synchronization, and it was well worth it. If Bachmann put half this effort into their N scale line, they'd be dangerous. But, for the mean time, I'll just appreciate how absolutely friggin' awesome the On30 stuff is.
