I'm thinking of buying my Christmas present soon, and I wanted some advice on a steam engine and maybe with working steam? If possible Canadian. I would eventually have sound installed. I had a Kato Mikado and really liked the reliability, but it has disappeared.
Well , what are you looking for ? I have a few steamers that I kept back when I sold the rest . I have 2 BLI M1's a N&W J class a Bachmann Heavy Mtn , a K4 ,and a Kato Mike , They all have Tsunami 2 decoders and I will let them go for 125.00 each . They havn't run for a few years , but when I had the layout set up they were my best running locos . Mike
What Mike C has available would be great runners. And even adaptable to Canadian lines. BLI has a good bunch of steam now. As long as you go with Paragon 4 in it, or Tsunami or ESU. The Paragon 3 and lower were iffy. Spectrum's steam with sound is mostly good stuff now. Stay away from their older 4-8-4, gear issues.
Jack, One of the major manufacturers did real working steam in the UK a few years back. I am not sure if it was HO or N gauge. - Tonkphilip
Jack, The “Live Steam” locomotive was from Hornby in HO scale back in 2006. There is a very engaging review of the system at: Scottpages.net/reviewoflive steam. Interesting items include that it uses distilled water in the tender, 7 Amps to the special HO rails and acceleration is easier than deceleration. - Tonkphilip
+1 in favor of Kato Mikes and recent Bachmann steam. All my stuff is DC, but you never said if you're looking for DCC or not. Sent from my Pixel 8 using Tapatalk
BLI has several steamers with smoke and all the DCC features like sound. They have a Big Boy, Challenger and the newest run of 4-8-4s are smoke equipped. I have a Big Boy on order, but can't give you a review. From what I've heard, the lifespan on the smoke is around 5 minutes, which makes it somewhat useless to me ........at scale speed, it takes a train about 10 minutes to make a lap of my mainline, so I'll only get a half lap before needing to refill the smoke unit. From G scale, I find smoke to be dirty and I doubt N is any better, so I may never use the smoke. Ignoring the smoke, I find BLI steamers run well and are very good pullers. I have 2 Pacifics and a Mikado. I haven't pushed the Pacifics beyond my 10 car FV Hiawatha, but I've had 60 cars behind the Mikado. They have a CP version of the Pacific. As an option they also offer a Stealth series of their locos, which are DC (but DCC ready) but if you are thinking of adding later, you would be worlds ahead to buy the DCC version up front. I've also had good luck with newer Bachmann steam. And I have some older stuff.......a couple of LifeLike Heritage units and a couple of Model Power units, but those are not available any more
Yes actually BLI makes a couple and they are pretty good from the reviews I have read/seen. Mostly on the larger units like their Big Boy but I think there was a 4-8-4 that had it too.
