Well let's see what shows up in mailbox. Item # is 22921. Don't know if an Athearn # or the vendors.
Wish I still had the old Con-Cor loco.
Joe D
I've got a ConCor Challenger which still runs well. It's now a roundhouse queen, with only the rear of the tender being visible. The TSU equipped Athearn Challengers run and look exponentially better than the "old iron"...plus, they've got Tsunami sound.
The default sound settings aren't all that great. When you get yours, John Colombo (jdcolombo) and I have our own settings which greatly improve the sound as well as how it runs.
I prefer to let the decoder do the smooth acceleration and deceleration, and so when I operate both my Big Boys and my Challengers, after the bell and whistle, I jack my speed immediately up to "6" on my Digitrax throttle...the engine accelerates slowly and smoothly up to yard speed...then when I'm clear, I jack my throttle again immediately up to "10"...and the engine accelerates smoothly up to a medium mainline speed. I do just the opposite when decelerating, but when I suddenly turn my throttle knob down, the engine gets a "light stack" (chuffing quiets way down), you can hear the rod clank very distinctly (which is prototypical for Challengers and Big Boys)...and at lower speeds, the brakes squeal very realistically. I can't get enough of the sound on these engines, nor the way the TSU decoders integrate the sound with how the engine is being run with what Soundtraxx calls "Hyperdrive Technology"...which sounds like something out of Star Trek. Whatever it is, it does a great job of matching motion to sound effect...after you reprogram certain CV's.
