That’s easily rectified, Massey: Just turn down the volume on your SD40-2 decoder to 50%. You should be able to do this either through your throttle, or by removing the shell and turning the volume knob manually. Your BLI locomotive manual will have details on how to do this.
Tom
G.
What you don’t see are the thousands of satisfied customers of BLI steamers. I have 7 of them ranging from the early Paragon to the Paragon 2 I1sa. The only problem I ever had was with a Blueline J1 with a broken gear. A quick Email to BLI got me 2 sets of gears in less than a week and a quick note with helpful instructions. In less than an hour it was running like a Rolex. My Blueline M1b ran for an entire weekend train show both days non stop. This loco probably has well over 200 actual miles on it with no troubles at all. My two I1s (PCM and Paragon 2) run great together and I team them up with a brass I1s and BLI J1 regularly at the club in pusher service.
I bet a few of your problems will go away if you change out the traction tired axle with all metal. The traction tires are not very uniform in thickness.
Pete
I’ve only made one BLI purchase. It’s a Brass Hybrid Dreyfuss Hudson. One of my most beautiful steam engines. But, it had a number of problems out of the box. I ended up fixing them myself instead of going to BLI, after what I’ve heard about their repair department.
Motor wire was rubbing the flywheel. Moved the wire.
Rear truck spring was lifting entire engine, causing terrible performance. Clipped the spring for proper pressure.
Front driver springs were a little too heavy. Squished them down a little, now they’re fine.
Traction tire drivers were a little wobbly. Swapped them for the regular drivers.
DC models are imbalanced. Added about 1oz. to the front of the boiler.
Tender was sitting very low. Added washers between the trucks and frame for proper height and levelling.
It’s quite a nice runner now. Very smooth and quiet, with average slow speed performance. I love the thing, but come on!! I shouldn’t have to do this much to make a $300 steam engine run right! My cheaper Spectrums (minus the Shay) ran great right out of the box, and it’s supposed to be Bachmann who has the poor QC!
Darth, I only ever purchased one Bachmann Spectrum, and that was supposedly a NIB J Class from a reputable dealer on ‘that auction site’. Neither I nor my very skilled local engine fixer buddy, a brass and plastic collector and decoder installer/repairer for years, also an electronics enthusiast, could get it to work smoothly below 20 scale mph. I finally ordered a Stealth Paragon J from another fellow, also deemed new, but it had a split gear. BLI asked for proof of purchase, which I supplied them as a jpeg attachment to reply email, and they promptly (next day) invited me to send it in. That represents one of five times I have sent a BLI steamer in for repairs, two others also warranty, and two my own fault. They fixed my Hudson for nothing anyway, very nice, except for return shipping only, and the fourth was my precious PCM Y6b that I dropped. That was $40 for everything, returned to me.
I know that many people make good use of the Bachmann line, so I am not going to assume my J was representative. People have raved about the Spectrum 2-8-0, and I hear good things about the other J’s, their Heavy Mountains, etc.
For the price of these things, you’d think the QC would be a lot better. Imagine if ABC Grooming Shear Company that sells $350 professional quality dog grooming shears to my daughter had a return rate even close to what it seems to be in our hobby! Sony and other companies sold $99 DVD players before the newer BlueRay ones came into the fore. I’m sure their failure rates were nothing like what the HO hobby seems to have to deal with these days.
Crandell
Crandall you are not alone on the Spectrum J engine. My 610 did not like slow and if there were any flaws in the track it would pick up the tender and rarely (as in never) placed it back on the rails. Poor design in the tie bar.
Other Spectrum engines, like the 2-8-0 and the heavy mountain are great runners.
Massey
Pete, that may well be. There may be 3.5 million satisfied BLI customers out there with 35 million locos that ran {run} great and fine.
But I have seen more actual reports of failures on the forums than I have seen bad press for Bachmann! THAT does not bode well for BLI.
Just for the record, we have seven steam locomotives 4-6-4 and larger. Two of them are BLIs. A Mikado and a Hudson. The Mikado has been in service since Christmas of 2004 and the Hudson since 2005. Both locomotives operate flawlessly and at any speed, and both have hundreds of hours on the layout.
I have no experience with BLI’s more recent offerings, but for the money I don’t think there is a better steam locomotive available than the originals from BLI.
Hi again!
To paraphrase a previous poster…
We (on this forum) often hear about the guy that got a “lemon” loco or car or whatever. But for every “lemon”, there are a whole lot of guys that got very satisfactory products. As I wrote earlier, I did get an RSD-15 w/o the sound system it was supposed to have. But, BLI took care of it for me, with no problem.
These new fangled locos are complicated precision machines, and there will be problems - and hopefully they are few and far between.
I understand that one may get a good running loco here and there, but it certainly sounds like the frequency of taht occurrence with BLI’s HO, Steam, Paragon 2 (not 1) series, is less than desirable. In my opinion 50/50 is no good.
If the other manufacturers are so bad, where are all those posts? I’m not talking about 1 bad loco. I’m talking about 4 out of 4 locos and 3 out 3 releases in my experience. I don’t care about great customer service if the loco is junk!!! If t it never runs properly, what’s the difference. Also, If I shell out $300 at the cheap end for a loco, I would expect at least 1 out of 4 to work properly. So far I have heard that most people are satisfied with the older Paragons… not the Paragon 2s (i.e. Korea vs China). I expect to “tweak” a loco after it has run propely for some time - not when I buy it!
If it’s a Digitrax issue, why not disclose you have a problem with that booster? Which leads to another issue I didn’t even mention of BLI posting features on the locos that don’t exist in the end product. Even after I told them, they did not change the description.
I am aware of the family name in the BLI company and I am not “friends” with MTH either so whatever rivalry exists between them and their supporters is irrelevant. The product QC at BLI is clearly off, at best. They should be addressing that if they want to survive. If american built solves that issue, perfect, but even Korean built seems to sit fine mith most.
Posts like this should exist to warn people that they are taking a chance with the product. Posts like this should also be read by the manufacturers so they can make a better product.
Jim,
I think your last statement is a bit strident when referring to BLI.
As I said in an earlier post, I have a love-cautious relationship when it comes to BLI locomotives now. Newer releases from them may come with issues but the issues are - in most cases - fixable. I may not enjoy having to send them into BLI for repair but at least they honor their guarantee and fix them.
And when they aren’t fixable, BLI has been very good about replacing the defective units. In my case, the four steamers that I sent back for repair came back running very well and issue free; one them was replaced completely.
Junk locomotives, OTOH, are junk when you buy them. And - no matter how much time, effort, and money you put into them - they aren’t going to yield you a better or improved product.
So, I do agree with you that for the price, QC should be much better with BLI releases. However, calling them junk is hardly fair. My [2c]
Tom
Point taken - frustration was speaking more loudly than sense.
Been in that boat, too, Jim. I understand…
Tom
Add me to the list of BLI steam fans. I have owned nine of them: four of the original Blue Box USRA Heavy Mikes, and five of the Paragon USRA Lights (I’m down to one heavy, simply because I needed more of the lights!). I’ve had ZERO problems with any of them, aside from some overlube issues. They all run great and have been behaving themselves very nicely, even the four that I currently have on loan to a friend who’s backdating a LARGE home layout from 1970 to 1956. Those engines have been run heavily for two years now without a single problem. I plan on selling off what’s left of my BRASS USRA Mikes in order to get more BLI Mikes.
Speaking of that large home layout, my friend also has about a dozen BLI light and heavy Mikes of his own. He’s had ZERO mechanical issues (he’s a bit pickier than I am when it comes to decoders, so does occasionally rip out the BLI guts and replaces them with Tsunamis). I have another good friend who has another eight or 10 BLI Mikes as well, and he hasn’t mentioned any problems with them either. Considering he’s investing dozens of hours and LOTS of money on each engine to superdetail them to match a specific prototype, I’d think that he’d want to shake out any problems beforehand!
One thing I seem to see in this thread is that people have no clue as to how complex and fussy steam models really are. That most BLI engines look AND perform AND sound great right out of the box is a minor miracle compared to what this hobby has dealt with since the 1920s. Except for a couple of the commenters on this list, I doubt anyone here has ever fiddled with a Mantua or Bowser engine to get it to run reliably enough for mainline use; getting those same engines to perform well enough to SWITCH with can lead to “colorful” language. If most of you guys who were sending BLI steam back to have thrust washers installed saw the mess of brass Key and Oriental steam parts on my workbench right now, you’d all faint!
orsonroy:
Are your Paragons the first round or the Paragon 2s?
I have a Paragon Hudson that I have no problems with (didn’t even have to “tweak”). The Paragon 2s are the issue.
Maybe we need a post on how to tweak with some visual aids. I would love to get my T1 running perfectly. It’s beautful when it 's not convulsing.
Has your T1 been returned to you ‘repaired’? I wonder if the techs and BLI found nothing really wrong with it, which kind of leads me to suspect there is something about your DCC system, maybe speed steps on your throttle, or something that doesn’t allow this one engine to perform well on your layout. Stranger things have turned out to be the case after tons of shipping costs and transit time have passed in the night.
I will be the first to admit that the past two years don’t seem to have been kind to BLI. People have written posts on their website forum complaining about Paragon and Hybrid locomotives. In most cases, pretty much all of them in fact, BLI or other membes have helped to get them fixed.
Orsonroy,
You’ve got a good point. I don’t think there is one manufacturer for which I haven’t tweaked a locomotive for one reason or another. Granted, I don’t use diesel so I accept this. I’ve got quite a few brass models that are waiting their turn in the shop/workbench for tweaking and upgrade. I have even more from Bowser, Walthers, and yes, Bachmann’s that all need tweaks for one reason or another. I can’t say there’s a huge price differential to any of these frankly in comparison to the brass models I have.
OK, I’ll chime in.
I have 5 BLI/PCM steamers and 4 BLI/PCM diesels - results vary.
The first, an N&W class A, from the first run, was and remains perfect out of the box.
The 2nd and 3rd, two Reading T-1’s, had minor issues which I fixed, poor balance (weight added in smoke box) and drawbar hit tender frame when close coupled - a liitle filing fixed that. They run and pull very nice. I replaced the rubber traction tires with nylon ones from Calumet trains - no more traction tire problems.
4th and 5th - two heavy Mikes, both ran very poorly after only a short amount of use - but I had already heavily modified them cosmenticly - so returning them was not an option - I completely disassembled them and fixed them myself, with some PURCHASED parts from BLI.
The diesels - a four unit set of F3’s run very nice.
DISCLAIMER - all of these locos are DC, some came as original “stealth” DC versions, others have been deprogramed by removing decoders, replacing tenders, etc.
Not a great track record in my opinion. Especially considering I have over 30 Bachmann Spectrum steamers and have only had three duds, which they promptly replaced with engines that run perfectly.
And considering the price difference - Bachmann is a considerablely better value - I can’t wait for the EM-1’s, I think 4 or 5 will do nicely.
Crandell, the Bachmann J is without question one of Bachmann’s weak links,and I appreciate the fairness of your comments relating to your experiance with yours.
Just to mention a few, I have nine heavy Mountains, eight 2-8-0’s, four 2-6-6-2’s, and five 2-8-4’s converted to 2-8-2’s, two 4-6-0’s - all run well and look great.
As for MTH, everything I have seen suggests great mechanical build quality - but until they change their view on the electronics I am not interested. And I must say, I’m not impressed with the oversized cast metal detail, toy like drawbar spacing, and other toy like features of the sound a
Lets not compare BLI to Spectrum. Most will agree that the Spectrum 2-8-0 is a great loco. Both of mine quit running only after a couple hours. The plastic motor gear slips on the shaft. My 44 ton is on its third motor. And both of my K4s could only pull 3 cars without spinning its drivers on a small grade until I added lead to every place I could fit it. The only good spectrum I have is the 4-8-2. That make a score of 1 out of 6. If that is a good track record then why are we complaining about BLI?
If you want the best quality control program then bring back the kit locos. All my Bowsers run great and can pull a house down. Mass production of a precision steam loco is bound to have problems every now and then. By the time a mass produced part is found out of tolerance there could probably be hundreds already assembled and packed. Take side rods for an example. If one hole is off even by a thousandth of an inch there could be binding and poor performance. Testing every loco is impractical so they randomly spot check here and there. The hundred in between could be good or bad. No one knows for sure. At least the manufacture is making good on repairing or replacing defective ones.
Pete
Sometimes that is not a mechanical problem, but a problem with the CV settings.
If you have the Back EMF settings too high for example it can cause problems. I would try setting up Decoder Pro if you don’t already have it, and go thru the CVs and maybe try turning BEMF (and momentum) off and see what happens.
You might also try - if you run only in DCC - to change the CV to turn off the “dual mode” capacity so the engine only runs on DCC. Some folks have found that doing that makes the engine run better.
Also make sure the CV29 is set to allow 128 steps.
It may be none of these work, but I’d try these things before giving up on an engine.
I have twenty-one BLI steamers, all different, three Paragon2, one Blueline and seventeen Paragon. Seventeen diesels, four of them Blueline, the rest Paragon. My service problems have been about average. Two cracked steamer gears, one bad QSI decoder, and a rough drive. Add to that a GS-4 that had an out of spec fourth driver; BLI replaced it thru the mail. The diesels have been trouble-free. My Paragon2 FEC and SP steamers have chuff files that have an uneven cadence, which annoys me. I don’t have a lot of hours on these engines, well less than 100. The two cracked gears occured on the shelf. I worry that if BLI goes away, replacement gears may not be available. But NWSL sez they can make better quality replacements if someone pays the set-up fee, maybe $20-30. Re: MTH steamers and the over-long draw bars. I talked to a parts person about a replacement for my GS-4 bar. It turns out that all MTH steamers use the same design, but in about five different lengths. If you can establish that there is a shorter bar used in another engine that can work on your engine, you can order it. My GS-4 now looks OK. It needed the spring removed from the pilot assembly and lead weights added to the front before it would go through my Pecos, however. Also, MTH steamer decoders cannot and will not be upgraded, only the diesels.