I currently own and operate three Broadway Limited steam locomotives. Two heavy mikes and a light
mikado. I realize that all three employee the same running gear and motor, which may account for all
three running with a jerky motion in both directions. Lubrication does not correct the problem. Perhaps
there may be a problem with driver quartering and siderods are binding. Have any other modellers
experienced this problem with BLI products and if so have you found a correction?
I was undecided between a BLI and a Bachmann product and after a lot of consideration I decided to go with the BLI because I was under the understanding that the BLI was a better model. (I am talking about an HO scale Steam Loco here)
After purchase, I had problems with the gears not (internally) meshing properly- I also experienced a lot of noise and poor operation. I sent it back for repair and after them finally getting to fixing it 3 months later it worked, a little bit better.
I contacted BLI again and sent it back for a second repair- it came back and the headlight didn’t work and the gears were a little better but not perfect. I still had poor performace in reverse and was not 100% satisfied.
I contacted those at BLI a THIRD time and sent my loco back for repair a THIRD time. After the third time they actually got the repair right and it has worked great ever since.
I don’t know why it took three tries for them to repair the loco but after the third repair I was overall satisfied with the repair and the performance that I expected after spending almost 200 dollars for a loco. Perhaps it just took a lot of bugging and annoyance, I don’t know. They paid for shipping and the repair cost was covered by BLI for all three repairs.
Considering all the work I had to do to ge them to get my loco back in a proper running condition I would purchase another product from them. I’ve had worse experiences with other products and thier warranty department.
I have a pair of the original run USRA Heavy 2-8-2 engines. I run them on DCC and they run very smooth(pull good too). I have run them on DC and they have a rather high starting voltage. They seem to take off once the voltage starts going to the motor. I really did not notice any ‘jerky’ motion, but maybe the newer runs have some issues.
Jim
Don’t own any BLI engines but have been following the discussion on PRR boasrds about the 2-10-0. Long tender versions apparently have a loose plug in the tender causing the headlight to blink and reset the engine. Others have fine tuned them by removing the wheel set retainer and filing a little off the #1 and #5 bearing retainers and the area where the brass collar is in the center of the axle. This has solved the derailent problem and increased tractive effort substantially.
All of my BLI steamers are older, original runs, and according to the boxes, all were made in Korea. When I run them, I have absolutely no problems at all, they’re smooth, reliable and very controllable, even though on straight DC the control is pretty much in the upper 1/3 of my throttle, which means that I can’t run them in tandem with my other DC locos.
I don’t run my BLI’s that much, because of the DC/DCC voltage issue, but when I do run them, as I said, they run pretty flawlessly. However, I don’t think any of mine are Chinese production runs. I wonder if lax quality control from China might be the problem. It certainly seems to be that way, from what I’ve been reading on the Forum.
Tom
Can a BLI engine run a bit poor and have a jerky motion to them? yeah sure. But as far as being a jerk, I don’t know, I’ve never had one been particularly rude to me…[:D]
Sorry, I had to say it. As far the engine goes, I had a BLI Hudson for awhile, and didn’t have any trouble with it forwards, but I noticed that it (and other BLIs) can be a little hesitant and noisy moving backwards. Kind of like the engine doesn’t really want to go that direction.
A couple of my BLI steamers jerk slightly during slow start-up, and they have the upgraded QSI chip. Once above 15-20 scale mph, they run smoothly. My only jerk-into-motion engine is my first, the BLI Hudson with a non-upgraded chip. Since that chip didn’t come with BEMF, it will jerk the engine into a full 4-5 scale mph upon start-up. But it runs smooothly.
My BLI Paragon2 C&O T-1 exhibited smooth operation at low speeds and at high speeds as well, but suffered from somewhat jerky motion in the middle range. I requested a non-traction tired driver set from BLI which they supplied for free. Upon swapping out the traction tired driver set, the engine now has excellent performance at all speed ranges, even on straight DC. This makes me very happy with the product. [:)]