Yesterday I recieved a Lone Ranger General I bought on Ebay. It’s the first Railsounds equipped engine I’ve ever owned. Overall I’m very pleased with it. But it has a feature that I find curious.
My question is, do all Railsounds steam “whistles” sound like five chime diesel air horns or is it just my Locomotive?
Becky
Not just you; for years the low end steam whistles have sounded more like horns than whistles. For as many times people have pointed this out to Lionel, they don’t seem to be inclined to do anything about it. They must have a warehouse full of boards with that “noise”.
It seems the newer generation of Generals have cab-chat that is rather modern, but my LCCA engines whistles sound okay.
Just curious, how does your LONE RANGER General run, and what type of trucks came with the tender?
Becky,
Lionel came out with “Railsounds” for their cheaper offerings around 2004. It is also known as Trainsounds.
I hate it with a passion. It sounds cheap, and nothing like the Railsounds 2 from 1997 that I am used to. Railsounds 2 had that great sounding whistle and chuff. Trainsounds aka “Railsounds” cam’t come anywhere close. The whistle and chuff are terrible.
I started responding to this yesterday when all of a sudden pffffttt! My power went out! [li] So I hope I have better luck today! [:D]
The tender doesn’t have what I expected to find: the arch bar trucks originally designed for the Generals. Instead it has AAR roller bearing trucks with pick-ups and a fair amount of visible truck-mounted electronics. (Trying to get pics uploaded but photobucket is giving me grief right now.)
It runs well and outpulls the James Gang General it will be replacing, which was at the top of the list for me. Smoke and e-unit controls are on the back of the cab which has tinted windows. The tender has no tether, which I like, and all sound controls are on the bottom including a cleverly concealed volume “knob”.
What I don’t like about it, aside from the so-called “whistle”, is, as you may have guessed, the masks on the stack and the tender flanks. The catalog shows masks on the steam chests which would have been easy to work around but instead they’re on the stack in the most obnoxious place possible. So rather than trying to remove them as I originally planned, I’ll be looking into replacing both the stack and the tender shell. If I could manage to find a shell from the Disneyland General that would be ideal, but I’m not holding my breath.
Becky
Has anyone compared the pulling power of the LR General to the one with a Pullmor motor? I got one of these on Ebay too and thought it was cheaply made and sounded awfull. The cheap plastic shell was enought to make me want to get rid of it a lone which I did. I love Lionel but why don’t they do a diecast version MTH did it? I love the look of this locomotive just not the cheapness and maks all over the locomotive.
Kev
The Disneyland General is pretty, and came with nickel-plated wheels. Cheapest I’ve seen at YORK was $250.
I, too, loathe the masks. As well as the roller bearing trucks.
You could swap out the parts with a Coca-Cola General, which you can get on the cheap…