Darren, You probably WON'T need four powered units. One of my clubmates has the entire Kato Daylight set with all four add-on sets, and this last year when he'd run his Kato Alco PA-PB-PB-PA set there would often be unintended uncouplings between the second B unit and the last A unit, which we would only notice because suddenly there would be about a 6" gap or so between the run-away A-B-B set and the remaining A loco which was pulling the entire 18 car set by itself.
Merged I've merged the old / new topics on this subject together... :tb-nerd: :tb-nerd: :tb-nerd: :tb-nerd:
Lets say you have a Kato that their is a short and ruins the motor and some plastice gears. Replacewment parts are so high as to not be worth fixing. If there was an after market frame made of plastic for lets say $10 would you buy it and put the trucks in it and shell on it and have a dummy unit?
The old plastic frame LL diesels make some good dummys. When one no longer runs and beyond fixing...I remove all the 'guts'. I even take ALL the gears off the trucks. Can never have to many 'spare parts'. They dont weigh much more then a box car. They roll just fine down my 3% grade test track. If I ever need the shell off the 'dummy' for another project...the left over frame/axles ends up in the parts box.. ;-) .
