A little long winded so forgive me but I haven’t heard much on this subject.
This is somewhat an assessment of Athearn’s Big Boy. I would like to hear of other experiences anyone may have had.
I just received my Athearn Genesis Big Boy 4-8-8-4 yesterday. It is my first steam locomotive with sound. I ran it on my test track, a small oval with 18” radii curves and #4 turnouts for test purposes. When the permanent layout is operational it will be running on a minimum of #6 turnouts and 22” radii curves.
Programming it for DC use was a little quirky. I had to go through the programming three times to get the sounds I wanted.
The first time through programming the chuff would not change. The whistle got hung up half way through the 19 different whistle sounds available. The bell would not program at all, it wouldn’t even make a sound.
Did Athearn include a programming manual or CV index for the Big Boy? I noticed you said that you changed the whistle and chuffs, but I don’t remember seeing a CV index for the Challenger.
I have one of the 4000’s on the way in the mail also and your report makes it sound like the MRC might be improved for this model compared to the Challenger sound unit.
Athearn does give you a listing of the CV indexes in the manual. The manual gives you the History of the Big Boy’s, What the model features are, DC programming and operation, DCC programming and operation, List of CV indexes, and a trouble shooting section.
Thanks for the reply. It would seem that MRC might have made some improvements and that would be a welcome changed. I am curious if this CV chart will work with the Challenger sound module also, since its whistle and chuffs were very poor in quality and both were not correct for a Challenger or Big Boy.
The quality of the detail is very good if they just could get the sound half way right. I installed one of the Tsunami units into the Challenger just to get good sound and get rid of the MRC DCC drive.