Lionel Northern Pacific U33C

Classic Toy Trains Forum
1

I received the Lionel NP U33C from Trainworld earlier in the week. This is one of the Legacy locos that was on the super blowout listing for $270, original catalog price was $530. The good news is that it was fully functional right out of the box plus it looked and sounded great. The bad news, it as the TMCC lurch that was prevalent a few years ago. Up to about 5 MPH it sputters and stutters. I don’t have a Legacy system so I am running it with the old tried and true TMCC.

For you Legacy users, I am guessing that it probably would perform better with Legacy than with TMCC. I have a couple hours running time on it now but have not seen any improvement. I won’t be spending the $300 plus for a Legacy system so I guess I will see if eventually smooths out. I will enter the loco into the DCS system and see if that reduces the lurch.

2

Are you sure one of the trucks isn’t binding a bit? I’ve seen that kind of low speed issues when one of the trucks wasn’t exactly “right”. I know of no reason a Legacy locomotive with Odyssey II should do that, and I have half a dozen Legacy locomotives and none of them have that issue. Older Odyssey I locomotives were somewhat infamous for that issue, I still have several of those.

One question, does this happen ONLY when you first power up? If it happens every time you start, it’s most likely not anything to do with Odyssey, but rather some other issue. The Odyssey I “jump” only happened the first start after a power-off cycle.