BachmannTrains - 4-8-2 Light Mountain DCC Sound Value ECONAMI™ Equipped Locomotive - SOUTHERN #1489 (green) - N Scale

Quick Delivery, excellent engine

Had 8 cars hooked up and it stalled out and barely had any power or traction to pull them with the dial maxed out. To confirm I replaced with another train and it ran fine. This one is very nice to look at lots of detail but performs poorly.

This train is so much fun!

This locomotive is beautifully made and wonderful to look at. It’s great for photographing and showing off your lay out. Unfortunately there are a couple of problems with the one I own. After about 1/2 hour of operation the rods came off the left side of the locomotive. Bachmann has a generous 1 year warranty and they repaired the loco and sent it back to me in just a few weeks after I returned it for repair. Kudos to Bachmann for that and hopefully the loco will hold together better on the second go around.The other problem is that this loco can only negotiate fairly large radius turns. As a newby I was not aware that tight turns will derail the loco. Bachmann does warn that the loco needs at least an 11.25 radius. Bachmann is serious about this. At anything less, the wheels will jump the rails. The loco also does not like the Atlas turnouts I have used on my layouts.Again this loco is beautiful to look out with impressive detail. DCC sound effects are also cool. I just wish I had understood when I started that a 10.5 radius track was just too tight of a curve. Rookie mistake. At least I can run it on the layout’s outside track.

I bought this engine last summer and was very impressed with it's appearance and detail. However, while it ran great during the first couple of weeks I had it, it's performance steadily deteriorated until it got to the point where it could not make a complete circuit of my layout; it would just stall out. I cleaned the tracks; I cleaned the wheels, but nothing helped. I have just packed it up and sent it back to Bachmann for repair or replacement. I will report back when I see how they handle this problem.So far, I am not impressed.

I was pretty fired up about this purchase, but after running the engine for a few weeks, I think it's just too unpredictable when going forward or backward through switches. I'm using Kato track and my smaller switcher has zero trouble, even at the slowest speed. I'll still make it work as a passenger train, but backing in and out of spurs or advanced switching operations is OUT.