Can anyone give a seat of the pants review of the Atlas MP-15? How well does it pull, clear space inside cab for figures,etc. Thanks.
i just received 10 brand new undecs. 9 were dead on arrival. once i have all of them repaired i will test them.
I saw you post on the problems Sandro. I probably would have been livid if it happened to me. Hpoe they take care of your problems. Vypeman, how many cars do your units pull before wheel slip? I haven't received mine yet and I can only assume 8 to 10 cars will be the limit. I searched high and low yet haven't found acomprehensive review on the model.
:tb-shocked: Blimey Sandro, what did you do to deserve such bad luck? break a mirror? Run over a black cat?
Mine will grag a 3 set of Deluxe wells on flat ground, get a little dog breath in front and that is all she wrote.
I bought three, one of them runs fine, one of them super slow response time, and stops alot, third one does nothing. Not really impressed, but at least they did SRY, and they can sit in the yard and look nice if nothing else.
I have one, a BN unit. It ran beautifully out of the box under DC for around an hour in both directions without a hiccup. I installed a TCS MP-15N decoder in it and added a working rotary beacon and it ran just as well. It will pull 8-10 cars on level track but suffers on grades with that number. I have a 1.4% grade where it will slip with 5 NMRA-weighted 3-bay hoppers in tow. Other than that it runs like a champ! Maybe the problem with the dead units is the connection between the motor contacts and the light board?
Thansk to all for the responses. I should get mine today. I'm eager to see what this little jewel eill do. I don't expect too much pulling power purely based on the size and weight. I've never seen a small switcher pull more than 10 cars by itself anyway. I just hope it run smothly and is reliable. I am curious as too how bright and visible the lighting is on the unit. Currently my layut is about 50% lighted for night running. Hopfully I'll see for myself this afternoon. I've found a variety of mixed reviews on the engine. I guesss I'll find out for myself.
The front (long hood) headlight is good but the rear is a bit lacking due to the design of the shroud which also the 'light tube'. It's black plastic and may benefit from having the interior painted silver.
folks i was able to fix the problems with all of my mp15 : - removing the two inner bearings cured the grinding noise - two thin strips of styrene prevents the trucks from falling out - hardwiring the motors helped the bad contacts i'm in offline contact with rob pisani of atlas. we had a quite interesting discussion going on. hopefully i'm allowed to tell more about it soon.
I got mine yesterday. I've run it extensively since. As a positve note,I have to say the little unit will really creep. The detail IMHO is excellent. It doesn't like more than 50% throttle (MRC Tech2). Once you run up the juice it starts growling. I have also found that the growling is load sensitive. The more load, the louder the noise. That in itself makes you want to look for end play in the motor and flywheels. I'm kind of puzzled, when running downgrade and the load shifts against the loco it bucks like a bronco! This too may lead back to end play. If I remember correctly, the early Kato diesels had problems with end play also. I run only Atlas and Kato engines, period. I was expecting better performance form Atlas. I'm going to take a look inside and try Sandro's fix on the racket. If I can get her to run a little better, I'll certainly buy 1 or 2 more.
