Not per my experience. They run and sound really nice. Only issue is tight radius turn as the overhang catches on my lower track at some areas. One might have to re-gauge the drivers if using atlas turnouts as there are reports of them not negotiating those well but run flawlessly on my kato turnouts.
The only problem that I had with mine was that they were prone to stalling. When they stall, it takes a minute to get them going again. I ran mine on DC, as I am not a DCC user. It seemed that the decoder created a built-in momentum throttle. i finally got tired of the stalling and sold my pair.
It's ironic that a model locomotive with 8 drive axles is prone to stalling. Dozens of models with half that number have no problem.
I have an HO Scale pair, and I had the same problem when running the locomotives at the club on DC, everytime there is a slight voltage drop or interruption when going around a curve, the DCC resets itself and starts over from a dead stop. Very annoying, another reason I do not buy anything from BLI anymore as they do not offer a non DCC version of their locomotives. Rick Jesionowski
I own quite a few BLI diesel and steam locomotives (E7's, E8's, PA-1's, M1a/M1b's and T1's) and they all run fine. Only the Centipede seems to be a problem.
I find that the issue with the BLI centipede has to do with an ill fitting body on the chassis. These models are long and somewhat 'rigid' so any interference of the body with the drive train would cause electrical continuity issues leading to stalling. I could not get the body to stay in the proper orientation with the chassis... so problems as described by others were the same for me.
My set ran fine at first. Now can get the sound to start try to move and one stops starts up and other one stops. Does any company make a keep alive that will work.
I have several keep alives installed in various locos and they work well (TCS KA-1) but the question you need answered is if the paragon 2 sound board has the circuitry to accommodate one. To get that answer I would contact BLI to see. Don't recall coming across that info while in their technical docs. That being stated and based on your experience with the pickup degrading over time ("ran fine at first") the first thing I'd try is to clean the wheels and then the trucks themselves where current gets transmitted from the wheels into the loco. Also per my experience these locos are harder to rail than most and what looks correct when on the track may not be actuality and also lead to performance issues. So you have to really look close to make sure everything is where it should be and the pilots at either end are not bound up on their linkage to the center trucks. The axles/wheels not being gauged properly from the factory can contribute to that problem and is a documented issue so worth checking as well.
