I understood some time ago that the early release of the Athearn Union Pacific FEF’s had decoder problems that made low speed operation virtually impossible. My questions are: Was this true? If so, did Athearn ever fix the problem? If so, is there a reliable way on the aftermarket to distinguish between the problem units and the fixed units, such a road numbers. Thanks
As far as I know, the problem was poor quality electronics that weren’t adjusted well, but I think they could be tuned to work better. Athearn recently started to use better quality electronics (Soundtraxx Tsunami) in all their Genesis products, so I would expect operation to be better now.
The first run had the now famous MRC decoder. The Challenger and Big Boys had the same decoder until the last run Big Boys came out with the Tsunami. I don’t know of any of the Genesis FEF models being released so far with the Tsunami decoder. If they make a new run, the Tsunami will be in the FEF models also.
I purchased the second run FEF models without the decoder, which was an option for the second batch, but they were still using the MRC if you wanted very poor sound and a model that did not run well. It turns out that was the very option I tried to avoid. The FEF-2 and FEF-3 model is a great running locomotive on DC or if you install a real decoder. The model needs some work in the detail department to make it correct, but most model locomotives need corrections.
CZ
The MRC decoder was one of the most repetitive posts here since they were/are prone to failure. After just over a year after the switch to soundtraxx, the posts have trailed off significantly. If you pick an MRC equipped unit up it can be relatively easily changed over to a tsunami. Soundtraxx created a direct replacement for the MRC board that doesn’t even need resistors for the 1.5 volt bulbs.