Broadway Limited's NYC J1e Hudson 4-6-4

Model Railroader General Discussion (Model Railroader)
1

I have the above locomotive and have lettered it for a Northern Pacific A1 Northern. Yes, it shy one set of drivers and is shorter than the N.P.s A-1s. However, other than what has just been mentioned, this loco has the look of the original Timken prototype, which the N.P. bought and certainly beats spending upwards of $1000.00 for a brass example of N.P.s A series Northern locomotive.

Since I believe this locomotive was the first offering from Broadway Limited, I’d like to know what have other owners found to be it’s short comings? I can’t get mine to stay on the track, both the 4 wheeled lead truck and front driver set constantly derail. My minimum radius is 22 inches. I also don’t care for the whistle, although this may be adjustable.

2

I have that exact model, even the road name, and I love it.

No tracking problems whatsoever.

The only problem that I ever had with it was jerky performance when I first purchased it new.

I bought the upgrade QSI chip, and my problems were ended.

You could always add weight to the pilot truck and the trailing truck.

I have had to do that on several of my BLI steamers.

Rich

3

As a NYC fan and modeler, that’s a sacrilege! [:O]

I have the 2nd generation offering from BLI with the Paragon2 decoder and I couldn’t be happier with it. It’s beautiful and runs very well.

You might want to check to make sure that the front truck isn’t on backwards. I had a locomotive with that issue and it had all sorts of problems derailing until I rotated the truck 180 degrees. Voila! - The derailing went away.

Tom

4

It’s not possible to put the lead truck on backwards, You might be able to put it on upside down; but, this would lift the front of the loco and I don’t think the front and middle driver sets would make contact with the rails in this configuration, so the lead truck is on correctly.

Maybe if I were to sell this loco I would decal it back to the NYC.

Has anyone ever seen a description of how to determine if a locomotive is properly balanced, for and aft?

5

Now that you mention it, NP, upside down was probably what it was. What I do remember is putting it in the other orientation and the front trucks no longer derailed.

Tom