Correct on both counts, Peteski.
This thing came with a big honkin' steel weight that covered the tender floor and had an "attic" that extended up into the coal load. There was a circuit board on top of the steel weight that had an 8-pin dummy plug for a standard DCC decoder. All that had to go, obviously, so I used 1mm lead sheet on the bottom of the speaker enclosure (which you can't see because it's up against the top of the coal load); the speaker enclosure sides are 7mm-high .030 styrene. Then I stuffed as much lead sheet as I could around the speaker and also used the 1mm lead sheet on about 2/3 of the tender floor to regain as much weight as I could. Not sure I got it all back, but it seems to be getting very good electrical pickup.
This is a MoPac, which I think is from the second run. They tweaked the mechanism and the tender/engine drawbar connection on the second run to fix some issues with running smoothness and pulling power. So far, this one has run like a Swiss watch and will pull 12 cars through the throat at Bellevue Yard on my layout. I wish it were mine . . .
John C.
