A word of advice to anyone not happy with the noise and slow running of these engines.
It is ENTIRELY the fault of the factory bachmann decoder. I have two of these engines and have replace the factory decoer with TCS T4x decoder, with the 8 pin harness it takes about 2 minutes…
The TCS decoder has BEMF and silent running… It completely transforms this locomotive into a smooth running silent engine. Also it gives you seperate button control of the strobe on top.
With the TCS decoder it runs as well at slow speed as any of my Atlas Gold Series locos…
Hope this helps…
A tip… use the T4 X decoder and NOT the T1, as the T1 will not give you seperate strobe control…