7.05 OZ. Just got mine today. Ran just great right out of the box. I kind a laughed when I read where some one said theirs pulled 40 cars up a grade, however, I changed my usual procedure of putting approximately 20 cars on an engine for its first test, and I attached 42 fifty feet plus cars. It took off and went right up my 2% grade and around a 180 degree turn without slipping. Only problem, was an Atlas coupler on about the 6th car kept giving out. Really think Bachmann has done a superb job on this engine. I have most of Bachmann's recent steam locos and really think all of them all great. The pulling power isn't as good on some of them (certainly not as good as on this one) but I still would rate all of them an A.
Mine arrived yesterday and I finally got a chance to put it on the rails this morning. Full review pending, but at this point I really really really really wish I modeled a railroad that used them. It is quite something! Cheers, -Mark
How about a 2-6-6-4? Only 60 were built with the N&W having 43 of them. Or even better still a 2-6-6-4 with a Belpaire firebox. There were seven of these and were the first locomotives built with the 2-6-6-4 wheel arrangement. These were built for the Pittsburgh and West Virginia RR. These differed from the later N&W 2-6-6-4's in not only the Belpaire firebox but also these were designed with 64" drivers while the N&W had 70" drivers. The P&WV' seven 2-6-6-4's were odd balls to be sure and oddly enough they were replaced by what some consider to be another oddball locomotive, the FM H20-44.
Considering that the A ran in recent memory, it would probably sell, as even modern modellers of almost any road could run it as excursion power. The prototype was quite the versatile locomotive. N&W built it for fast freight, but it proved stable enough at speed even for passenger work.
Glenn - thanks for the weigh in. I received my EM-1 today, and ran it on the new club layout. I must say that you guys that told me Bachman steam had really come of age. I was very skeptical about this purchase but let me say boy was I wrong. I took it out of the box and placed on the layout and it ran so flawlessly that I still have problem realizing it is B'man. I will admit it had been run before because Mike Fifer test runs each and every loco before delivery. I am going out on a limb and say that it is hands over fist better than my IM cabforward. No wobbles, no hesitations, nothing to detract from its performance, absolutely amazing. Yes, the couplers are rather toyish looking to me and in fact the tender coupler caused a couple of derailments. It did not match well with a car that had MT on it. It also seemed that the coupler did not have enough lateral movement and also the tender acted a little light on the end. I took some video of it pulling a 30 car double stack train that has pretty good weight and load.It pulled up the 2% grades with no hesitation or added throttle. The vid is not very good quality, I forgot my tripod and I was juggling camera and throttle. Very pleased with the loco, now if it has some staying ability and doesn't break somewhere I will be very happy. Carl
Had a chance to run mine for the first time today. After making a few warm-up laps to kind of break it in I started adding two and three Bay coal hoppers until I had a 52 car train. It was mostly Micro-Trains with some Atlas and Bluford Shops cars. (I'm not a fan of in NMRA weighting standards, so my train was probably a little lighter than some.) The layout I run on has a 3% grade long enough to get the entire train on, and locomotive didn't seem to struggle at all. The loco was very smooth and quiet and aside from the coupler issue that everyone else has mentioned I find it very satisfactory. Bravo Bachmann! (I can't believe I just said that.) :closedmouth:
Charley: How did you straighten out the front porch (the area with the headlight) ? Two of my four are tilted, one significantly. Thanks, Bill
Hi Bill, You found it! Check your other post. I type too slow to retype it here, I hope it's clear. Charley.
Since, Bill brought this thread forward, I'll repeat some of my comments about the drivetrain I made early on in this thread and mentioned on his thread. My first EM-1 #7614 had some lock-up problems, caused by the valve gear rod/reverse link hitting the main rods at times. I thought I fixed the problem, but it still happens sometimes coming out of a curve, it's worse in reverse. I'm still tweeking the rods to try and fix it. My new EM-1 #7627 ran perfect out of the box, until today. When I was running it for my B&O expert neighbor (a HO guy to boot!!!) when it locked-up too. One of the rear engine cross heads had come out of it's guide. The eccentric screw was loose and when the main rod came around it hit the valve rod or reverse link and pulled the crosshead out. I fixed that problem and checked the screws on both loco's, three were loose! Check those screws! The main rod driver pin has a notch which a pin on the back of the eccentric engages, keeping it in position (forward lean) on the driver pin. By the way, the jam I just had slightly damaged the notch, so maybe the valve rod main rod lock, caused the screw to get loose. I hope it will stay on the pin in the correct place, otherwise the jam will happen again. The bottom line is, I think the that the screws may work loose, because the rods are hitting at times. I always check drive screws when I get a loco. I'm positive I checked #7614, but two were loose when I checked today.. As I told Bill, I'm just lucky, because nobody else has reported any problems. As time goes on, I hope I don't find this drivetrain even more unreliable. Charley
I finally bought one of these things. I am not a big steam guy, but since this is specific to a road that I do run, I decided that I would buy at least one. Appearance: Overall, pretty good. My pilot and deck does have the rakish tilt to it that others have reported. Other than that, it is pretty good. Runnability: It ran well out of the box. After only a few break in laps, I decided to try a creep. I was impressed. After minimal break-in, this thing will hold a steady fifteen SMPH. It runs smoothly. While not up there with the LL Berkshire for smoothness, it does match the MP mogul and eight wheeler (with Spectrum tender) or Spectrum USRA heavy 4-8-2. One thing that did surprise me was that it did not come from the factory with lubrication. I am not a DCC user. I am running it on a MRC 2800. Some of the Bachpersonn releases with decoders require large starting voltage; not this one. As one other has posted, it will take a curve that is more sharp than one would think. Mine clearly does not like the 13.75 inch Unitrak all that much, but it will go through them. The curve radius is the equivalent of just over twenty five inches in HO, which would put those curves in the conventional range. I have always read that in HO, articulateds function best on curves in the broad range, thirty inches or more (16.331 inches in N). I will be running it on seventeen inch minimum, once that part of the pike is complete. I have not yet tried to pull anything with it, other than one hopper and a caboose to check coupler height. It is still in break-in. The coupler height is slightly off. If I were to try to pull a fifty car, or more, freight train, I would use a Unimate equipped car immediately behind the locomotive. This one is a winner. That makes three in a row for B-mann: ten wheeler, mogul and this one. I would recommend it to anyone. More than one vendor has stated that this one has sold better than the Athearn Challenger or Big Boy. I would have preferred a Q-4, P-7, P-1d or P-3/P-4, but this one is pretty good, so I will take it. If this thing is selling that well, B-mann might want to consider second run.
This is what I have done to mine. Water feed tank, more pumps, replaced rear truck for 2 wheel one, put a doghouse on tender and then weathered it. It's now a DRGW L131. Runs and pulls beautifully. Only thing left to do is replace the front coupler with a M/T Z scale one.
I am checking here to determine if anyone has encountered a problem with their EM-1 running erratically. I had not run one of my for a week or so, and found it was running very fast for the dcc control setting of 1. I use NCE and ran the recovery program on the program track and then reprogramed the locomotive. Now is barely creeps at full throttle. I reset CV 2, CV 6 and CV 5; the locomotive now runs. However, using the headlight button on the NCE controller does not activate the headlight. I can get the turn on the headlight with key 2 and tender light with key 3. What are the next steps to restore factory functions? Thanks.
Roger, I will try to stick one ofmine on decoder pro tonight and see what the stock settings are. I haven't tinkered yet so everything should be good to get a base setting from.
Writing a value of 8 to CV8 is the standard method for resetting a decoder's settings back to the factory defaults. Not sure if that applies to the decoder in the EM-1, but worth a try. Cheers, -Mark
Tony, thanks! If I can correct the problem myself with programming that would be great. But I am also able to send it back to B'mann.
I set CV8 to 8. Locomotive runs. Lights do not function via headlight button on NCE. Lights function by pressing 2 and 3, headlight and tender light respectively. They stay lighted without regard to the direction the locomotive is running.
