New BLI Challenger

[Maletrain]

Are those really electrical pickups?  Looks like they would cause shorts if the axles are live from both ends.  But maybe the axels are only live from one end and 2 wipers per axel is redundancy for reliability?  Or maybe they are just springs? A multimeter will reveal the truth.

[spookshow]

They are electrical pickups, but they only pick up current from a single rail (the forward 2 axles pick up left rail current and the rear 3 axles pick up right rail current). There are insulator rings around the axle ends on the non-live wheels.

-Mark

[spookshow]

I'm a little confused with the smoke unit on mine. The instructions say that F7 turns it on, but mine is behaving just the opposite - it smokes with F7 off and stops smoking with F7 on. Wtf?

-Mark

[peteski]

Well, they should have stated that F7 toggles the smoke generating on and off. That would have probably been less confusing. Or just stated that F7 active turns off the smoke.  It is not unheard of in the DCC world to activate some function to turn some feature off.  (for example activating or turning om the mute function turns off or mutes the sound).

Oh lordy lou, axle wipers! And they're already getting dirty

Yes, we're back to old-school N scale baby!  BLI has done this on other recent N scale steam loco tenders.  One wheel insulated and axle wiper pick up power from one rail.  Why? not sure - probably cheaper than Kato-style all-wheel low-friction pickups. Or the Chinese designers just like to be different. 

But in this specific example with the centipede tender this type of pickup actually makes sense since the long-wheelbase rigid rear "truck" requires some lateral play from the wheelsets to traverse N scale curves. Axle-pint pickup would not have worked, although Kato cleverly worked around this issue in their centipede tenders. Again Kato-innovation vs. Chinese old-school designs.

[Mark5]

Or the Chinese designers just like to be different. 

1970s style different.

[mu26aeh]

Seems my BLI gevos operate the same way with F8 and sound.  If F8 is active on the throttle screen, sound is off.  If F8 isn't showing on the screen, the sound is on.

[spookshow]

So, BLI tech support explained this to me. The "state" of F7 (on or off) doesn't matter, pushing the button does. The smoke generator runs on a timer, and hitting F7 starts and stops that timer. IE, if the timer isn't ticking, F7 starts it. And if it is ticking, F7 stops it. Not exactly intuitive, but there you go. Maybe the idea with the timer is to protect the smoke unit from burning out if it runs out of smoke fluid.

-Mark

[reinhardtjh]

FYI: Mark has the review up on his site: https://www.spookshow.net/loco/bli4664.html

Thanks for the site, Mark.  Always appreciated.  The pictures are very helpful.

[u18b]

Hey Mark,  @spookshow

You mention at the end that BLI included disassembly instructions.
They are not actually the first.   

I think the first honor goes to the Arnold S-2 switcher.
https://www.spookshow.net/loco/s2.html
(although they were picture directions like Legos with no words).   But that was a long time ago.

However, I think BLI would be a first if you qualify for a steam loco.
(which is a big deal since they are so complex.)

Great review by the way.
Thanks.

[basementcalling]

Smoke around, near, or especially, coming from any DCC equipped loco makes me nervous.

[Maletrain]

Smoke around, near, or especially, coming from any DCC equipped loco makes me nervous.

And  it would probably set off Ken's new smoke detectors! 

[peteski]

Hey Mark,  @spookshow

You mention at the end that BLI included disassembly instructions.
They are not actually the first.   

I think the first honor goes to the Arnold S-2 switcher.
https://www.spookshow.net/loco/s2.html

Back when there were paper instructions included with the models, most European manufacturers include info on how to take the model apart (steam, diesel and electric) to replace motor brushes, light bulbs, and also provided instructions how to lubricate the model. Many were just drawings, but Arnold indeed used photographs. Of course there was also a spare parts list.  It makes sense that since S-2 was an Arnold rapido model, it included such info-sheet.

[spookshow]

You mention at the end that BLI included disassembly instructions.
They are not actually the first.   

I think the first honor goes to the Arnold S-2 switcher.

Whoops, forgot about that one. Thanks for the nudge 

-Mark

[Peter Amling]

I have an excursion 3985 and the installed tender top deck is smooth. The ala carte replacement deck is ribbed, but I still don't what that represents.

-Mark

Did anyone ever resolve this?

And has anyone done a comparison with the Athearn Challenger from a couple years ago? I'm wondering which will be more reliable and sound better (assuming both Tsunami decoders).