Hell Froze Over...

[Mark5]

M1 will come when all the true believers emerge from their bunkers, this following the Taliban's 3rd annual toga party and kite flying contest ...

[Dave V]

But Dave, 15" is your maximum now.  By the time BLI delivers the M1a, you will have built a new larger layout, torn it down, built it again this time to completion, fully installed the new Satellite feed hydrogen fuel cell technology that allows for total hands free operation, completely sold off your old PRR steam in favor of the late 90's Conrail theme you adopt in 2027, then you'll tear down the layout again when you move to a retirement facility where they let you have a small shelf 36" long that you can put the one train you have left, but only up to 30", because you'll need the other 6" for the cup you'll keep your teeth in...  Then one night you'll have a dream that you have a beautiful M1a pulling a 50 car train of N scale hoppers on a 4 track main line.  It'll be a beautiful dream, but then you won't wake up, and they'll cart you over to the veterans cemetery, fire off a few guns, give your wife a flag, and play Taps.  Three days later a box from BLI will land on the porch of the house you lived in 30 years ago.

I wish the story had a happier ending, but that's what I'm reading in my coffee grounds right now...

Swami Kenneth

LOL...  Maybe by 2027 we'll have body-mounted couplers factory-installed.

Heaven for me will be something along the lines of the Curve in the 30s with a bottomless beer cooler.

[kiwi_al]

They said that the M1 was dependant on how well the E7's, E8's and PA's do so it wouldn't hold my breath yet!!

[SkipGear]

My Burlington E8's showed up yesterday. Beautiful model. The stainless effect is second to none. My only complaint was interference with the front step and truck. It looks like they beefed up the tooling around the front step to make it stronger and in the process limited the opperational radius to 18". I pulled the shell and dremeled the gusset away and not it runs fine on my 11" test loop.

 Heaven help anybody that thinks they are going to strip one of the CB&Q's. Before getting out the dremel to remove the step reinforcement, I tried with a #11 blade. It wasn't budging. I couldn't scrape or shave anything off, like it was a metal casting. I got the dremel out, and ground it down to reveal something interesting. The shell for the CB&Q is copper plated, then the stainless plating is applied on top of that. All other paint and detail is applied over the plating. When I first openend them up, I swore the whole side of the loco body was a photo etch piece. Now that I see how the plating was done, that explains it better.

 The sounds are great. They are louder than the BLI versions and have a new and definitely improved speaker enclosure. The decoder board is smaller, single level and a much neater install this time also. Will play with programing later tonight.

[Dave V]

Finally got an e-mail back from BLI/PCM.  They stated that the M1a/b should take a 9.75" radius, and that the website info was wrong.  They also made it very clear that this locomotive does not exist yet.

Yeah, no kidding.

[up1950s]

"so it wouldn't hold my breath yet"

Looks like he is holding out hope .

[wm3798]

All right... Who farted?

D. Cheney

[daniel_leavitt2000]

Has anyone seen the mythical single headlight, FARR grill, sound equiped, undec E8? What type of pilot does it have?

[SkipGear]

Well, I'm 1 for 2.

I programmed the loco's Friday night and was really having a bit of fun with them. There are 20+ sound features to choose from, including a macro for a grade crossing horn, auto horn toots for forward, reverse and stop, and even some interesting background sounds that can be played, other than your normal train talk and passenger call. I stopped playing when I found the Farm Sounds background settings. I was too busy laughing. After that, I put them to bed for a Ntrak show Saturday morning.

Saturday morning I set them on the layout by themselves, called up the consist and away they went. I did a few laps to check out track work before I pulled out the CZ to go behind them. I parked them to add the train. After the train was assembled, I went to pull away and the rear unit was being dragged along by the front. It was dead. I tried a few quick reprogram steps and nothing could coax it to life so I pulled it off the track and ran the single loco.

The loco was the hit of the show, especially with my 4 year old driving and hitting the farm sounds button when ever he passed by spectators. The sound on this loco with a single speaker is twice as loud or more than the old LokSound system with dual speakers. Although it was much louder that I would run it at home, at the show it was great to get over the background noise. Even the die hards cracked a smile when the loco moo'd as it when by one of the modules with a farm scene on it. It's a useless feature but fun.

When I got home I tried a master reset on the rear unit that failed, with no luck. I pulled the shell to find the decoder getting excessively hot. It looks like back to BLI for this one. I fired off an e-mail tonight, we'll see what the response is Monday.

Even with the bad decoder, I really love these loco's. Too bad I really don't have any desire to stock them in our store. Not enough money to be made to take a chance on FTD dumping them on a fire sale later and getting stuck with unsold units. The margins are too low to take a chance.