Does anyone own one of these? Are they any good? I’m looking to buy one DCC ready.
Thanks in Advanced,
Luke
Do you mean DCC ready or DCC/Sound installed? I strongly suggest against the latter.
David B
Dcc ready.
In that case, they are a fine, fine model and well worth the price…
David B
Bought two of the Santa Fe red and silver when they first were released. Nice units after I removed the garbage that passed for DCC and installed my own.
Bob
I purchased three, but have not had them out of their respective boxes yet. Sorry.
I bought two of them in Santa Fe Passenger colors. I cannot recommend these locomotives highly enough! The level of detail on them is superb, the mechanism is incredibly smooth and quiet, and best of all, the circuit board Athearn used in them can accept either an 8-pin NMRA plug or the 9-pin JST connector (meaning, take a Digitrax DH163, DH123, or TCS T-series decoder and you can just plug it in without having to wire anything in). The circuit board also has the advantage of using voltage regulators for the light outputs, so you don’t have to change bulbs or mess around with resistors in order to install DCC. Just plug in your choice of decoder and go. [tup]
And as David mentioned above, definitely avoid the ones with sound already installed. Buy DCC-ready and install your own.