Mike Wolf announced at the TCA Museum in Strasburg PA yesterday that delivery will be the end of May. [:D]
Is the missus expecting? Gestation took long enough…[:-^]
Congratulations, that’s cool.
Did he say what year?
Thanks for the laugh. Now, when’s the real delivery time going to be? I need to stare at one in person at the LHS. If a picture of the K-4 makes me feel better about my Blue Boxes, then viewing the model in person could probably erase embarassed feelings about any Bachmann and Life-Like stuff I have lying around.
At least the El Cheapo items are…cheap!
Next month BigBoy. How many did you order?[;)]
Hmmm.
Is the price just for the locomotive? How much is the control system set up?
What’s interesting is that I expect that a couple of the major DCC manufacturers will likely purchase a unit or two and take it to their labs for test running and “dissecting”.
No matter how big or how small potential competition might appear…study their products performance and construction. It’s the typical, old fashion practice of industry!
It’s doubtful that DCS would ever be any threat to DCC, but as JNIchols mentioned some of the more positive attributes could be useful.
Interresting. I watched the video from the MR site, but they did not blow the whistle. Does it have a K4 passenger whistle sound or the thirties era banshie whistle sound? Do you have a choice?? Pennsy fans, at least I would want the regular K4 whistle that was used in the forties and fifties.
Th chuffing on the tape was recorded from an engine that had a valve problem as one chuff was extremely loud every rev of the drivers. The in service engines were very sharp sounding.
Does it run on either DCC or DCS??
Thank you
So does my BLI K4s. Must be the same recording.
Yawwwwnnnnnnn…
LOL!
Sorry, not in HO. I’m a 3 rail O guy, and exclusively TMCC (and all diesel to boot).
Though I really like some of Mike’s premier cars, and own a bunch, I don’t have any MTH engines. I plan to control my layout with a computer, but without the DCS codes, no can do. Too bad really, because there are a bunch of engines he makes, which I really like.
Well,
Everybody’s seems to be happy with some command control related item coming soon.
Digitrax’s sound decoder…Soundtraxx Diesel Tsunami (Oh yeah!)…QSI’s sound decoder/module…
In that respect I’m excited all three will be available this year.
As for the MTH K4? Well, I’m happy for the people that are anticipating in getting one. I’m looking forward to reading the feedback reports later on in the fall. Should be interesting.
(in my best Homer Simpson voice, speaking like he speaks about Dove Beer"
Diesel Tsunami, Diesel Tsunami, Diesel Tsunami, Oooooooooooooooohhhhhhhhh!
One really sick Idea here, Could you replace all the fans on a GP-40 with etched brass, and mount a speaker in each. Could the decoder power 4 speakers and would it be much louder???
http://www.trains.com/Content/Dynamic/Articles/000/000/006/601mqufa.asp
http://www.mthhotrains.com/ [tup][tup]
Given the delays, trials and tribulations of this thing, we could save a lot of bandwith if Mike Wolf just didn’t announce any more dates until the shipper has actually picked them up from MTH and has them en route to whoever wants them.
They all have product delays such as Atlas, Kato, Athearn, Bachmann, Likelike, Intermountain, BLI, etc etc etc etc. It’s not fair to say or give the impression that MTH is the only company with delayed deliveries.
The only video that worked for me was the Quicktime one, and frankly I wouldn’t buy it on the basis of that. The image was very small and the lighting seemed far too kind - let’s see what it looks like up close under harsh lighting, as I really couldn’t see much in the way of detail there. Running qualities looked about the same as my 10 year old Hornby A3 (bought it as new old stock a couple of years ago, runs like silk despite having a 3-pole “Pancake” motor) - if the best MTH can do is offer the same performance as a pre-super detail Hornby tender drive loco I’m not impressed.
“Running qualities looked about the same as my 10 year old Hornby A3.”
Dear Matt,
I think you’d find the WMV video more to your liking, because it’s considerably larger. We had a glitch with the Quicktime piece.
As far as operation, if your Hornby locomotive runs as well as this MTH K-4, you have one smooth locomotive. The K-4’s mechanism is so quiet that (with the sound off, of course) the loudest sound you hear when it runs is the sound of the wheels on the rails. We haven’t finished comparing the dimensions and details to Pennsy drawings yet, but our resident Pennsy expert took a quick look at it, and he thought it looked good.
We’ll have a full review in the July issue.
Thanks for reading MR,
Terry
Terry, My apologies if I have caused any offence, that was not my intention. For some reason I can’t get the WMV version to load (think the problem is Winamp - tries to load but doesn’t have the right codec). Will have to keep trying.