I'm a Z Scaler now and I have not bought N Scale stuff for the past 4 years. Yesterday I was at the Train Shop in Santa Clara and seen this beauty in NP. I had Bruce put it on the test track (tender was already attached on this one) and it ran flawlessly and oh so smooth. Reverse was the same smooth slow and beautiful operation. I have it sitting in front of me right now. Fragile yes, but no more so than Z Scale. Detail? The best I have seen in N Scale short of some Key Brass models. This is a model that is tempting me back to N Scale again. It's so huge though, but so beautiful! Tons of room inside for a Z Scale sized decoder, and maybe 10 minute install, just unscrew the small weight on top of the bigger one, and you loose 4 grams, but gain an arena of decoder space. Cut wire lengths to fit, solder tin the tips of your wires and plug into the socket. I examined NP photos of 1170 and 1172, and it looks like they nailed it for an NP G-1 Class! (Use an Optivisor to extract maximum satisfaction of this model) Need a bit of plumbing work and cab work to represent an NP G-2 Class, but doable. I love this loco! It is the best N Scale steamer I ever had! I have 7 Kato Mikes, but this is a much more evolved design. Did I mention it's fragile? Monkey Paws beware! Mine is serial number A062.
Ha ha! This sounds like how my NTrak club members talk to each other when someone buys something HO just because they can't bear to live without it. You could mount it on a Marklin Z scale chassis and put big metal jaws on it and call it SteamZilla. (Note the capitalized 'Z.')
Skipgear and I talked about this the other day, and he and I are going to find out which one fits. We should be posting shortly.
FWIW, Walthers has advised my local hobby shop owner that the NCE N12SRP is the ticket. I ordered one, based on their recommendation, but haven't had the opportunity to install it yet.
A quick video for those wanting to see one run. [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gKwgmKOBNeI"]YouTube - Walthers N scale 0-8-0 Test[/ame]
Thanks for the video, good to see one run, I've ordered the undecorated which hasn't arrived yet. Seems to run well and pulls a decent length train for most layouts. Please Walthers, hurry up with the undecs.
The only thing done to it was to bend the wires coming out of the harness that plugs into the tender down at about a 15 deg angle. That seems to be the key to the difference in pulling power, make sure the wires interfere with nothing.
I'll try the wire bending thing tomorrow and also hopefully will be able to fit the decoder in. News at 11.
Anyone know if they are offering "road specific" tenders like they did in HO or have they given us the "one version for all" like they did with the N scale Berk? (In HO they had the right tender on the VGN Berk, but the wrong one in N).
Thanks for the Vid. It'd be nice to see the loco starting and stopping (this is where most N scale locos fail).
Sorry, didn't think about stoping or starting. Most were whining about pulling power so I wanted to show what it could do. Slow speed performance is excellent and most agree to that so I didn't bother with a video of that part. As to the tender question, there are different inserts for the coal bunker but that is about it. One has a stoker, one does not. I haven't seen any word of different tender bodies though.
Thanks Skip! Looking forward to mine next year, gonna try to bash it into this: Moving the headlight should be interesting ... Angling the cab hopefully will be relatively simple. Looks like the tender will need a little vertical extension. Gonna go for changing the obvious spotting features to get it "close enough".
Chris posted on the Atlas board that with weight added, his, without traction tires, pulled 25 cars on level and there weren't anymore cars on the layout at the time to try. He has stuffed weight in almost every place he could find on the loco though. In stock form, with the wires properly installed, I would guess may 5-6 cars on level without the tires. I am not going to get into the debate over traction tires, it would be nice if small steam could pull well without them but I feel it is a necessary evil that we will need to put up with to get respectable traction given the light weight of smaller loco's.
Well, the decoder recommended by Walthers will work if you don't put the tender shell back on It "plugs and plays" but there is so much extra wire that it will require a complete resolder of the (severely shortened wires) before I can tell if the decoder will fit in the tender with the top weight removed. You know, I really didn't spend this kind of money to have to be the "test group" for this engine. It's beautiful, and by the time I'm done fighting with it, it will probably work just fine, but this is a total PITA unless you've got specialized soldering equipment (which I don't). A good friend in our NTrak group will no doubt help me get this squared away.
