My pair arrived yesterday. The shell and running gear detail level is very high. I'm not expert on these locos but they seem to look accurate and very well decorated. Impressive!
Since it just happened that later in the evening I was going to an operating session on friend's layout, I took them over for a test run. It is a room-size DCC layout using Atlas C55 flex track and switches. The models are to be permanently joined using a screw-mounted draw-bar. What a pain that was! They should have designed a draw-bar which can be snapped together.
The locos ware set up for address 03 and one unit was already configured to run in reverse. The sound is very impressive too (I don't know if it is correct for that loco, but it sounds good). The volume is way too loud, but that can easily be adjusted (I didn't have time to do that yet). The illuminated number boards (controlled by a DCC function) are a cute gimmick, but since the clear number boards painted solid black, then white number is Tampo-applied over black background, they don.t really illuminate very well.
Running them was a disaster! They didn't even run half way through the layout. While they ran ok over flex track, they stalled and/or derailed over pretty much every switch! The cause? Tight wheel gauge on all the wheels ob both locos. This was mentioned by someone earlier. Just liek Arnold SW1s, these do not get along with Atlas C55 switches. The tight wheel gauge causes them to usually climb onto the guardrail (so the flange runs over the rail top of the guardrail).
I took one apart when I got home. The wheels can be re-gauged (on a $400 set of locos this shouldn't have to be done!), but it will take some serious tweaking to get them to the Peteski's quality standard.
I'm hoping to do a thread on that later (much later). In certain areas the assembly workmanship is fairly shoddy. There was also some super-glue fogging of the body around few handrails.
I am impressed that the enclosed booklet for the decoder is pretty thorough. Nowadays, documentation included with models is pretty sparse. There is also an exploded parts diagram enclosed but nothing mentioned about ordering spare parts.
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