There are some new pics of it on the site, looks like their best yet. I love how front class lights are red on the engine and the marker lights are also red on the tender. Very nice touch in HO.
When you get yours, can you please post videos or pics? Thanks.
When the engine is running in reverse and not pulling anything, the front class lights become markers. That is the only time they should be red.
My expectation is that the Hybrid Q2 will be a true blockbuster in the HO steam world. It is all brass, with the exception of brake shoes. To get factory sound and DCC in an all-brass engine weighing 1.75 lbs for $540 is pretty darned impressive. And delayed only three months! [8D]
-Crandell
My thoughts exactly Crandell [tup]
Cheers! [:D]
Blockbuster? What’s that? You think “everyone” wil buy one?
I’m sure its very nice, but only 3 out of the 30 or so modelers I hang with are PRR modelers, and I bet only one of them buys one.
Yet I could sell a dozen of the B&O Pacific’s BLI never made to that same group, maybe two or three dozen if they offered them “as built”, “modernized” and unlettered in both of those versions.
So I’ll keep my $500 and buy three or four Roundhouse Pacific’s if they turn out to be any good.
And maybe an Athearn MT-4 or two when they get here, without sound or class lights.
Seems to me the market research is defective/non existant.
Sheldon
I could have used a better word, Sheldon, I agree. How about if I word it this way: It will turn out to be a quickly sold-out engine for a number of reasons, one already stated…it’s all brass and for half the cost of a typical brass engine. Did I mention it comes with a sound decoder? I know you have no interest, but clearly some of us do.
Secondly, there will not be another run, at least not as a hybrid series of brass/plastic, or all brass as this one is. So, just as a hot movie sells out if it is highly desired by enough people, I am pretty confident this engine will do very well. [:D]
I hope you get your Pacific, and it would be great if it turns out to be a Hybrid. BLI doesn’t seem to be too keen at the moment, but…keep hoping.
-Crandell
A short video of it is up on youtube.
Oh I don’t know. I’m strictly C&O, and I’m even tempted to buy one. A beautiful engine is a beautiful engine.
still has fingers cross for a B&O EM-1, 0-4-0 docksider (A good one) along with C&O H-7 and 4-8-4 someday
Hmmm… The chuff goes in and out of sync, but the wheels do not. Fascinating.
I looks super! I can see a red wire behind the headlamp, so that will have to be taken care of. But it looks super. Not sure about the whistle.
-Crandell
I understand, but personally I’m not a collector (neither are most of my friends), I don’t have any shelf queens or stuff with no purpose on the layout. No GG1’s, K4’s, GS4’s, BigBoy’s, Triplex’s, FEF’s, Challengers, N&W “J”'s, etc, etc.
But since I model B&O, C&O, WM and my freelanced ATLANTIC CENTRAL, I would go for all of your hopeful choices. I still say the market research that keeps giving us PRR and UP is seriously flawed.
Sheldon
I used to collect several road names. Now I pretty much stick to PRR. What can I say, its where I grew up. I will always love the Pennsylvania Railroad.
But since I model B&O, C&O, WM and my freelanced ATLANTIC CENTRAL, I would go for all of your hopeful choices. I still say the market research that keeps giving us PRR and UP is seriously flawed.
It goes even farther than an obsession with the PRR and UP. It’s an obsession with the big engines of each. We have Big Boys coming out the wazoo, but where are the Harriman Consolidations, Pacfics and Mikes? You can get a Pennsy Q2, T1 or J1, but where are the H8’s, L1’s or G5’s?
Anybody wanna bet if MTH or BLI ever do a Northern Pacific steam locomotive it will either be a Z-5 2-8-8-4 or one of the 4-6-6-4’s of classes Z-6/7/8?
Andre
If you think about it models like the Q2, J1 and T1 are quite rare in the hobby, I certainly don’t think they have been overdone like the Big Boys. If anthing the PRR J1a is under represented in the market, despite the fact that it was one of the best performing coal haulers of all time. Excluding brass, only one company makes the J1a, and after the first run, its impossible to track these down now. They are all sold out.
The J1 can’t in any way be compared to something like the S1 which was an absolute failure (despite being one of my favorite art deco locos), apples and oranges.
I do agree though that we need some Atlantics.
My goodness, Sheldon. [banghead] Do you wait up in a tree for someone to make a statement/express a thought so that you can then jump all over it and tell everyone why you won’t buy one…or what you would end up removing from it, if you did?
Here’s the term, according to Merriam-Webster:
blockbuster (bläk-ˌbəs-tər) n. 2. one that is notably expensive, effective, successful, large, or extravagant - e.g. a blockbuster movie
So, by sheer definition of the word, the term blockbuster as “notably expensive…large, or extravagant” - even before a single person has purchased one - accurately describes the BLI Q2. All that’s left to determine then is whether or not BLI’s newest release is “effective” and “successful”. I think that is all that was meant by Crandell’s use of the word, Sheldon; one that I’ve always took as “wildly successful” - i.e. whether I buy one myself or not.
Please quit looking for a hockey game every time you go to a fight…[sigh]
Tom
That’s not the point. The point is that LARGE engines are represented far out of proportion to their actual numbers. Not only that, there’s often more than one manufacturer doing the same engine (Van Sweringen Berkshires, the thrice accursed Big Boy and the N&W J come to mind right off the top of my head).
Pennsy had 574 L1 2-8-2’s vs. 125 J1’s. The Mikes could go places where the 2-10-4’s couldn’t. A 2-8-2 is a much more layout friendly engine. In any case, the J1 was a Pennsyfied copy of the C&O T-1. If it was one of the more successful coal haulers, it was no thanks to Pennsy engineering. The design kudos should go to the Advisory Mechanical Committee (or perhaps more correctly to A.G. Trumbull) of the Van Sweringen roads (NKP, C&O, etc.).
Models of large engines are not rare in the hobby. It’s small to medium sized engines that are rare. That’s part of what everyone’s complaining about. I might have moaned if BLI had done a Pennsy H8/9/10 simply because it’s just another Pennsy engine, but at least such an engine wouldn’t overwhelm a layout and Pennsy did have something like 1500 examples of the 3 classes. Were I a Pennsy fan, an H8/9/10 would be a much more useful engine than a 2-10-4 or a 4-4-6-4.
Andre
Well… my understanding is that one of BLI’s best selling models was the T1 duplex. So I don’t think it should be a surprise that they might look at the Q2! It’s what a friend of mine refers to as the “Lionel Factor” - that certain locos are just so interesting and outside the norm that “people just have to have them”.
Now, on the other hand, given that the I1sa (which is not an enormous loco, and is rather mundane as far as looks go) was a roaring success (sold out within a couple of weeks), I think BLI might be more willing to make some locos for the operators rather than collectors.
I have heard that one of the issues they’ve had in the past is that people expect smaller locos to be proportionally cheaper than their larger counterparts - it just isn’t so, because they have approximately the same number of parts and complexity, and that’s what is the deciding factor on price, not raw materials, which may be a buck or two different between a 2-10-0 and an 0-6-0.
I am wondering why we are ending up with the same large locomotives as well. I know about the idea that they sell. I also know that there is a market for them. I also know, though, that there is an underground market for those “plebian” small engines that did the switching and the branchline duties all over North America.
It looks more like there may have to be a split market–much like the split from the “toy train” market from the more craftsman model HO scale.
blockbuster (bläk-ˌbəs-tər) n. 2. one that is notably expensive, effective, successful, large, or extravagant - e.g. a blockbuster movie
So, by sheer definition of the word, the term blockbuster as “notably expensive…large, or extravagant” - even before a single person has purchased one - accurately describes the BLI Q2. All that’s left to determine then is whether or not BLI’s newest release is “effective” and “successful”. I think that is all that was meant by Crandell’s use of the word, Sheldon; one that I’ve always took as “wildly successful” - i.e. whether I buy one myself or not.
The operative word has to be “successful”, otherwise the expense and extravagance mean nothing other than a waste of time, effort and money.
Personally, I’m hoping that the Q2 is about as successful as the movie “Ishtar” which was notably expensive and extravagant and a total flop. Maybe BLI and MTH need a couple of expensive flops to get the message.
To quote a line from an old MASH episode "We want something else!! We want something else!!
Hmm. Maybe we should be banging Army mess kits while we’re yelling that.
Andre
I have heard that one of the issues they’ve had in the past is that people expect smaller locos to be proportionally cheaper than their larger counterparts …
Well, people need to get their expectations in line with reality. There are N scale brass locos out there that are beginning to approach $1000 a pop. The material is not where the cost is, it’s the engineering and design coupled with the estimated number that can be sold.
If people expect smaller locos to be proportionately cheaper, surgical removals of heads from the place where the sun don’t shine may be necessary.
Andre