Yes, Jason, it looks so much better in a close-up photo!
I wonder if that thing can pull 100 cars. I don't believe I have ever seen an N Scale steam loco that could quite hit the 100 mark.
I rebuilt a Rivarossi Big Boy that I modified by changing it to a Sagami can motor (some machining of the frame was necessary) and adding weights until it reached the 8 ounce mark on a postal scale. I installed the Sagami because I eventually burned out the stock motor pulling 100+ car trains with it.
I also turned down all the flanges on all the locomotive and tender wheels on my Unimat lathe. This was done back in 1993 when I was a member of the Belmont Shore Lines club. On meeting nights, I regularly pulled 108 car trains around the layout including up the curving grade on Tehachapi Loop in the middle of the layout. In fact, the limiting factor was the performance of the Micro-Trains couplers. Any more than 108 cars and I started to have couplers slip loose under load among the cars near the front of the train.
The cars were all equipped with Micro-Trains 1008 low profile wheels and were a mixture of 40 and 50 foot lengths. The wheels made a big difference - with standard MT wheels (pizza-cutters), I could only manage about 70 cars.
I still have the engine but don't normally it on my Los Angeles themed layout.
BTW you really hear the "Slinky" effect when starting a train this long. The engine moved over one car length before the caboose started. I kind of liked it myself - it mimicked the sound of a real train starting. But that's just me.
