I was at the LHS and briefly looked at a Bachmann GP 40. It looked a lot better than what I have been accustomed from Bachmann. I when I got home I went to the Walthers catalog.
It uses a Bachmann drive, same as in their standard line. I buy these and run them until they inevitably fail. At that point, I pull the decoder and transplant it into one of my better units, usually a P2K or an Athearn. These Bachmann’s use 2 function NCE ‘Silent Running’ decoders. Nothing wrong with those.
At first glance it does. There are some minor differences. One of them is slight better detail. It’s also a better quality plastic. It doesn’t split like the plastic Roco used for their models.
My GP 35 took some tweeking on the drive train to get it to run smooth. The decoder smoked after about 4 hours. (rewired it for DC) The shell had some real nice detail for the money. Mine didn’t come with flywheels though. That was a bit of a bummer.
Jeffrey - I like these GP40s and I have a few myself. I noticed they do have a significant growl at startup and low speed. I’d always assumed this was a noisy DCC chip. Are you saying that that growl is coming from the motor? What kind of average lifespan (hours run) do get out of these? I’d hoped they would last with mild use.
I have some that are 2 or 3 years old, but they’re not DCC. They do however have the same drive. I don’t have growl problems with the DC models. But with the DCC models that I got around October or November do have a growl at low speed. The newer ones that I got last month don’t do it. I opened up an old one and a new one to find out why. They both have NCE decoders, but the newer locos have the Silent Running decoder from NCE. It doesn’t make any difference in running, but they don’t growl and hum at low speeds like the old ones do. The locos are however notorious for motor failure. When one of mine bites the dust, I pull the decoder and put it in one of my P2K’s or Athearns where it will continue to serve me well.