Just got two of these in SF dress. They look nice, but probably have enough issues to warrant a short commentary:
right-hand rod assembly on both was crushed just enough to cause lock-up on left turns. Easy to fix.
ragged running on one, somewhat so on other. Smoothing out with some running time, but I doubt they will ever creep the way P2K small steamers can.
great sound, but chuff totally wrong for the speed; have to see what I can do with this, having had some experience with Tsunamis.
very weak headlight and backup light. Probably wrong value dropping resistors.
tender leaf springs for power pickup from track to axles are installed wrong. Washers which should be between the screw head and the spring were installed instead between the the spring and the body. Since the hole in the spring is exactly the same size as the screw head, the spring will (sooner or later) slip right over the screw head and fall onto the track. One of mine had already fallen off in the box.
This turned out not so easy to fix, because the nuts and wire lugs inside the tender are GLUED to the screws. I had to unmount the circuit boards to get to them. The design of the power path using the screws is poor, since the screws have to be loose enough for truck rotation. Springs should have been put around the screws, but weren’t.
as with the DC Decapods, the tender is too light, and the two interconnecting cables tend to push it off the track. The pilot truck is also too light, but adding more spring tension would decrease traction. I plan to add some weights in both areas. Also note that the coupler air hoses hang too low and will snag frogs and such.
If you plan to do some shell switching, note that the pickup polarity in the engine section is opposite to the DC version, requiring that the tender axles be reversed.
Just got two of these in SF dress. They look nice, but probably have enough issues to warrant a short commentary:
right-hand rod assembly on both was crushed just enough to cause lock-up on left turns. Easy to fix.
ragged running on one, somewhat so on other. Smoothing out with some running time, but I doubt they will ever creep the way P2K small steamers can.
great sound, but chuff totally wrong for the speed; have to see what I can do with this, having had some experience with Tsunamis.
very weak headlight and backup light. Probably wrong value dropping resistors.
tender leaf springs for power pickup from track to axles are installed wrong. Washers which should be between the screw head and the spring were installed instead between the the spring and the body. Since the hole in the spring is exactly the same size as the screw head, the spring will (sooner or later) slip right over the screw head and fall onto the track. One of mine had already fallen off in the box.
This turned out not so easy to fix, because the nuts and wire lugs inside the tender are GLUED to the screws. I had to unmount the circuit boards to get to them. The design of the power path using the screws is poor, since the screws have to be loose enough for truck rotation. Springs should have been put around the screws, but weren’t.
as with the DC Decapods, the tender is too light, and the two interconnecting cables tend to push it off the track. The pilot truck is also too light, but adding more spring tension would decrease traction. I plan to add some weights in both areas. Also note that the coupler air hoses hang too low and will snag frogs and such.
If you plan to do some shell switching, note that the pickup polarity in the engine section is opposite to the DC version, requiring that the tender axles be reversed.
Just got two of these in SF dress. They look nice, but probably have enough issues to warrant a short commentary:
right-hand rod assembly on both was crushed just enough to cause lock-up on left turns. Easy to fix.
ragged running on one, somewhat so on other. Smoothing out with some running time, but I doubt they will ever creep the way P2K small steamers can.
great sound, but chuff totally wrong for the speed; have to see what I can do with this, having had some experience with Tsunamis.
very weak headlight and backup light. Probably wrong value dropping resistors.
tender leaf springs for power pickup from track to axles are installed wrong. Washers which should be between the screw head and the spring were installed instead between the the spring and the body. Since the hole in the spring is exactly the same size as the screw head, the spring will (sooner or later) slip right over the screw head and fall onto the track. One of mine had already fallen off in the box.
This turned out not so easy to fix, because the nuts and wire lugs inside the tender are GLUED to the screws. I had to unmount the circuit boards to get to them. The design of the power path using the screws is poor, since the screws have to be loose enough for truck rotation. Springs should have been put around the screws, but weren’t.
as with the DC Decapods, the tender is too light, and the two interconnecting cables tend to push it off the track. The pilot truck is also too light, but adding more spring tension would decrease traction. I plan to add some weights in both areas. Also note that the coupler air hoses hang too low and will snag frogs and such.
If you plan to do some shell switching, note that the pickup polarity in the engine section is opposite to the DC version, requiring that the tender axles be reversed.
the pony trucks on my three 2-10-0’s are very lightly sprung.
I have noticed a problem with the Decapods pony truck too. I believe springing is not the solution.
If you look at the pony truck axle frame, it does not extend to the edge of the axle’ where the wheels are fitted. This causes a MEMORY effect after leaving a curve, so the pony truck actually runs an on angle while on the straight piece of track.
This appears to be caused by the longer axle sliding to one side of the much shorter axle frame. When the loco come onto the straight, the axle is on one side of the frame & therefore the frame is angled to one side.
I have fitted some “C” section plastic tubing over the axles between the fram & wheels. This means the wandering frame is now forced to play by the rules & everything is now fine.
I have installed Tsunamis in 3 of my older Spectrum Russians. I have 5 of them all together and none seems to have any of the problems with bent rods, slipping belts or tender wipers I keep reading about in all the talk groups. Two came with the stacks broken loose during shipping and one had a couple tender wheelsets popped out of the frames. None of these are things I consider worth complaining about. Perhaps I’m just very lucky.
The Tsunami setting I finally used to sync the exhaust sound to the drivers was 255.
All my Russians run very slowly and smoothly and…believe it or not…in BOTH directions!! I’ve never had anything run as well in reverse as forward as these beautiful little engines. I’m very thankful Bachmann listened to the MR poll and gave us Russians to play with!!!
Have spent some more time on one of the engines and improved some things.
The chuff rate was too slow, but easily reset.
The weight of the tender was increased by removing the coal load, where I found plenty of room for some lead stick-on weights.
The light problem was two-fold. The yellow leds used are dimmer than whites (the light is more dispersed), so I wanted to change them. But I found the boiler door was firmly glued in place. Perhaps the lamp housing will come off with the bulb, but it didn’t look that way, so I let that go for now. Plan to call Bachmann and ask how to change the bulb.
Then I checked the diode board and found the dropping resistors were 1.5K plus another 235. It should be more like 470 total, so I shunted the 1.5K’s with 270’s. This may be overkill for that led, but it helped the brightness some, not drastically.
Just got two of these in SF dress. They look nice, but probably have enough issues to warrant a short commentary:
right-hand rod assembly on both was crushed just enough to cause lock-up on left turns. Easy to fix.
ragged running on one, somewhat so on other. Smoothing out with some running time, but I doubt they will ever creep the way P2K small steamers can.
great sound, but chuff totally wrong for the speed; have to see what I can do with this, having had some experience with Tsunamis.
very weak headlight and backup light. Probably wrong value dropping resistors.
tender leaf springs for power pickup from track to axles are installed wrong. Washers which should be between the screw head and the spring were installed instead between the the spring and the body. Since the hole in the spring is exactly the same size as the screw head, the spring will (sooner or later) slip right over the screw head and fall onto the track. One of mine had already fallen off in the box.
This turned out not so easy to fix, because the nuts and wire lugs inside the tender are GLUED to the screws. I had to unmount the circuit boards to get to them. The design of the power path using the screws is poor, since the screws have to be loose enough for truck rotation. Springs should have been put around the screws, but weren’t.
as with the DC Decapods, the tender is too light, and the two interconnecting cables tend to push it off the track. The pilot truck is also too light, but adding more spring tension would decrease traction. I plan to add some weights in both areas. Also note that the coupler air hoses hang too low and will snag frogs and such.
If you plan to do some shell switching, note that the pickup polarity in the engine section is opposite to the DC version, requiring that the tender axles be reversed.