I am watching some of these on ebay and they seem affordable but are they any good? (Union Pacific 2-8-2 Mikado by IHC. Price $54.00 plus shipping ) Please tell me all you can pros and cons. Thank you, Joey
I have several and they are good little runners. My best is a IHC 4-4-0 that can pull 3 cars over a 9" section of track in 22 secs with out jerking. I don’t know what your Mike will do, but I have several IHC’s and I am happy with all of them. Check that, I am happy with all their Premiere locos.
Hey thanks for the info Spacemouse, anyone else?
They run pretty good, stay on the track. If you get other IHC steamers, they will run with each other. I have 2 2-8-0s and 1 4-8-2. I can put them all together and they run very nicely with each other. The detail isn’t the greatest, but they are plastic and can be easily detailed.
My girlfriend bought me a IHC 2-8-0 and boy is it a great locomotive, It runs great and it pulls very well, almost better than some of my bigger steamers and my diesels.
I have 5 IHC steamers and they all run fine. Little lacking in detail but a good drive and motor that pulls alot. They are simple to work on and you can add your own super detail. The price is very good also. Make sure it is the Premier version.
Bob
I have one of the 2-8-2s, and it’s the quietest engine I own. It’s around 5 times quieter than my Kato SD80 and runs like a high quality diesel. All it needs is a Bowser 2-8-2 Light Mikado super detail kit, and with one of those installed it could be mistaken for a super high quality steam engine![:D][:D]
I have a 2-8-0 and I’m very happy with it. It was really inexpensive compared to some of the other plastic locos out there today and it runs really smooth and works well at low speeds.
I have a 2-6-2, but I have to convert it to DCC & sound. I have run it for short periods on three occasions. It doesn’t like my EZ-Track large turnouts…it tends to stall in them unless I run it through at something like 20 scale mph. Otherwise, it s nice-enough loco, not the most detailed by a stretch, and the valve gear is not up to par for completeness compared to BLI, Spectrum, and P2K. It is very quiet, and responds well to the throttle on DC.
They have can motors and are easy to convert to DCC. But they are not plug and pray.
Crandall, does it short the track or lose power.
Actually, I just realized that I goofed. I should have a said a “2-eight-2”, not 2-6-2. [:I][B)]
No, it doesn’t short. I can nudge it along, and it picks up right away. It appears as if it has two sets of pickups on the tender, but I don’t see any on the loco. Also, no wires, just the drawbar.
No wires between loco and tender? It’s not a push mobile is it. (Motor in tender) No wires on the loco is common. But no wires between? Any plug like a wire is missing (like on BLI) [scratching head]
The engine and tender have seperate power sources. The engine picks up electricity with 6 of it’s 8 drive wheels using small wipers that come out of the frame. The pickups on the tender are for the reverse light on the back of the tender, but the light is almost invisible. There’s a hole in the front of the tender to make it easier to wire the backup light to a DCC decoder in the engine.
Birthday present, it is the best locomotive on the layout if you’re smart.
I’d like to install a coupler on the front of my IHC 4-6-2 Hudson, but the Kadee 5 that I would like to use is WAY-Y-Y too big for the smallish coupler area. I’d like a pointer or two on how to chop out or re-engineer the front coupler on a 4-6-2.
And, yes, it runs great and pulls ok. If I can get the coupler on the front, I’ll order another one ( C&NW livery, of course!!)
Ahhh, Darth, that makes sense. Thanks, but I could not see anything around and under the drivers that looked like wipers. The tender IS heavy, but I assumed it is merely weighted.
All I could think of with the wireless hook-up is that I had to do some fancy isolating or remodelling the tow-bar out of plastic.
Jofn, is that a Hudson or a Pacific? 4-6-2 = Pacific.
Not sure, but you probably have to remove the pilot, and then the removal of the coupler will be more apparent. You might have to build a styrene box to place the Kaydee, and then alter the pilot somewhat to fit around what you constructed for the coupler.
I bought a package of Kadee “Draft Gear Boxes” from my LHS. They’re dirt cheap, but of course they are just plastic boxes. However, they’re a perfect fit for the couplers, so all I need to do is get the space right for the box and cut or shim as necessary to get the height correct. They take a 2-56 screw to mount to the frame. The shaft bushing in the center of the box is plastic, too, so the coupler does not make electrical contact with the frame. That’s important with Kadees #5’s, which have metal shafts and can short between engines and cars if they’re not insulated properly. This, in turn, can fry decoders.
MEDIOCRE[8]
i have an IHC Heavy Mountain and it performs as well as my bachman heavy mountain for a third of the cost.
People slag them off for their detail but then forget that they arent paying as much as the engines they compare them to which kinda makes their arguments invaild