Pros and cons. I am looking for some good tractive effort. I wouldn’t buy a sound version right off the bat but install it myself. Is it true there is no room in the Kato version.
Thanks in advance
Perhaps a very skilled person could find room for a sound decoder and a speaker but from my experience it would be tough if not impossible. The shell is so full of weight it is quite difficult to even remove it. I had Litchfield Station install a non sound decoder and they had to do a fair amount of milling to cut grooves in the weight to for the wire runs. But what a SWEET runnin’ locomotive. My best by far. I won’t ever trade if for sound.
I have two of the older Kato NW-2 models and had to grind out room on top of the weight to even fit a dime-sized Lenz LE077 decoder. There’s absolutely no way you’re going to put sound into one of them without sacrificing nearly all of the weight and having to put the speaker in the cab in place of the interior details.
While I don’t own a Kato NW2, I have several Atlas/Kato and Stewart/Kato locos. You can’t beat their performance. I also own a BLI NW2. It is a great runner, and the sound is a real kick. If I was buying a new engine and had the choice between DC and DCC with sound I will always spring for the factory equipped model, unless its an early Athearn Genesis with the MRC decoder. You will usually spend 70 to 100 dollars more for the factory Dcc/sound. You’ll have more than that invested after buying a Tsunami and speaker and still have to do the install. I also got what I thought was a great buy on a new BLI NW2 that had had the QSI sound decoder removed. By the time I bought and installed a Tsunami I had more in it than I paid discount for the new Paragon 2 version.
Thanks all for the replies. If I get an NW2 with sound it will be the BLI, as adding sound to the Kato unit doesn’t sound very pratical though I have a source where I can get the Tsunami decoder for about $80 and a good bass speaker for about $10.
It was encouraging to find out that the Phase V BLI NW2 is correct for the two that the Wabash bought new. (The Kato would be correct for an NJI&I version that the NJI&I bought used, however.) Just for fun I brushed the dust off a Life Like SW1200 I had stored away and was suprised that it would pull and push 12 NMRA weighted cars up and down the 2% grade. Any more than that and it was a struggle. I listened to two You tube videos, one with the BLI NW2 with the factory QSI, and the other a BLI NW2 with a Tsunami. In my opinion the Tsunami is superior. One thing I noted was the Tsunami has the EMD whine sound to it and the QSI did not. Would this be correct for the NW2?
Did BLI offer the NW2 straight DC?
Hi!
When I decided to go to DCC, I reviewed all 50-60 of my locos to determine the degrees of difficulty in installing decoders. Fortunately, most were pretty straight forward. One that wasn’t - as you have already heard - was the Kato. It immediately went on Ebay.
I picked up a BLI w/sound and it is great! Frankly, its hard to beat a quality loco that comes from the factory with a sound system!
I’ve got both, a Kato and a BLI. The BLI runs smooth and sounds great but there was a tracking issue with them that I don’t know if it was ever fixed. Mine will only run backwards out of the yard or it will derail. There was a post somewhere covering this issue, but I don’t remember where. The Kato is one of the smoothest runners I have. I tried to install a Lok sound decoder in one of mine and almost had it, had to mill the frame and install the speaker in the cab. Had the whole thing almost together when my temper got the upper hand, lets just say I salvaged the sound decoder.