Who’s buying one? I might be, I decided against getting the PCM version for various reasons, I am anxious to see the slow speed performance on this Paragon 2 model and I wasn’t a fan of loksound either.
I wish stealth versions were released, I would buy one of those in a heartbeat. We need more Reading steamers, this is where I do wish that manufactures would listen to those who have been pleading for smaller steam, with the Reading Railroad its really a matter of necessity. Reading was a well known railroad, yet why so few locos? I’m a little surprised at Bachmann for not jumping on this, or Athearn for that matter.
I reserved a D&H centennial unit since I am a Delaware & Hudson Railroad guy myself. I am quite anxious myself as I have quite a few other BLI/PCM models and am sure this will live up to those same expectations. It is interesting how they are up on ebay already but FDT does not list them as instock. Hmmm…
I have two stealth versions from the orginal PCM run. Very nice locos, BUT, I did have to do some work on them, and one was missing parts which took several calls to get replaced.
The drawbar has an offset that hit the tender frame when coupled in the closest position, the tender frame had to be filed down to allow close coupling.
The locos were a little tail heavy, seems even back then they left the smokebox empty for the future smoke unit, causing a bit of an unbalnce in the weight. I added about 1.5 oz in the smoke box then they tracked nicely.
It will be interesting to see if these things have been fixed (I wonder how much a smoke unit weighs?), but I don’t need any more and as everyone knows, I don’t want sound, smoke or DCC.
Don’t forget this is the second run, the original ones WERE offered as plain DC. I have no experience with the new Paragon 2 sound systems, but I have 2113 with Loksound and it is very nice. Actually it’s my second one, I had one that went with all the rest of my stuff and recently bought a second one oneBay. The first one did have a loose wire on the power plug int he tender which cut off one side of the tender wheels for power pickup, which made it a bit touchy about track condition. It was a simple fix, the pin had been inserted into the shell the wrong way and when the plug was pushed into the socket, it popped said pin out of the shell rather than make contact. The one I have now had zero issues out of the box, it crawls along extremely slowly, as expected from the excellent BEMF in the Loksound decoder. More accurate sounds are available, recorded from the actual 2101 when it was AFT 1, but I don’t have a Loksound Programmer to swap it.
There was a flurry of the old ones on eBay with Buy It Now prices of $399 and even higher for the Loksound version (MSRP was $399), I guess people hoping they could get rid of them before the new ones appeared which carry a lower price for the sound version. It looks like BLI is out of the plain DC market, they have either Blueline with a DC sound decoder or the Paragon 2 with DCC sound.
When I got my first one I compared it to the Daiyung/NJ brass one from the early 80’s. No contest, the BLI one had better and more accurate details. The newer Overland ones are the nicest, but for the price of one of those you could buy a fleet of the BLI ones.
Nowhere in the eBay listing does the seller claim to actually have the model in stock. In this case, I’m betting he has several on order from BLI (or whoever the manufacturer is), and is hoping to pre-sell them before they even arrive at his shop/home/warehouse/whatever.
I’ve been “burned” before by eBay retailers listing an item they do not yet have in stock. In one way, I don’t mind as this is no different than ordering an item from my LHS that they do not have in stock and waiting for the order to come in. However, it does bother me when no mention is made in the eBay listing, or during the transaction prior to purchase, that the item is not yet in stock.
To me it seems more than a little sneaky to imply the item is ready to ship, especially with a new model like this one where people are eager to get their hands on one and are willing to pay full price or more believing they will get theirs before everyone else.
On the other hand, maybe I’m wrong and this one particular eBay seller has some “in” that allows him to get the models in his shop before his competitors have theirs. But, I wouldn’t count on it.
Tom
PS: It’s also hard for me to trust any retailer with the term “Sin City” in its name. Of course, it is Vegas, so maybe his shipment of T-1’s “fell off the truck” and that’s why he has them early.
While I heartily agree that there is a long unfilled need here, I also am fully aware that any such possibility of it being met is highly unlikely when it comes to most classes of Reading steam engines.
Wooten fireboxed locomotives were largely confined to certain roads in the northeastern United States. So, the manufacturers are afraid to make even a small experimental run to test the waters for them, preferring instead to make yet another run of some old standby like an outlandish-sized, articulated, monster from the mid or far west. In fact, until the appearance of BLI’s T-1, in the entire history of the HO hobby since the mid 1950’s, the only non-brass, rear cab, Wooten fireboxed engine ever offered in plastic was the old Bachmann Reading I-10sa 2-8-0 ! With its molds long gone today, odds are very long that we’ll ever seen anything of that design again…at least where models under $500 per are concerned.