I've read elswhere that their top speed is a lot lower than the prototype, but that's not a deal breaker for me. I'm going to think about it some more this weekend, but will problably order the CN set next week from Dallas modelworks.

Thanks!

I received my set from Dallas Model Works last evening, and after an hour to two of installing the Sargant couplers and setting up the consist, I ran them for a bit.

I'm pretty happy.

The bad part is, they sound so much better than any of my other locomotives.....sigh.

Here's a quick video; the picture quality isn't the best (I may re-shoot this weekend with a real  video camera instead of my digital still), but I think it gives a good idea of the sound quality of the QSI Decoders.

Much better video quality on this one, and I think the sound is improved as well.

Enjoy!

They sound great. But running those passenger cars on the turns does destroy the illusion that one is looking at the real thing.

Irv

Agreed - and they are freight locos so they shouldn't be pulling passenger cars, and the storage shelves behind it, and the bad lighting, etc, etc.

I thought as I had questions on these models, others might as well, and the video is more to show what they look like and how they operate, realism wasn't a goal, as I'm sure my enthusiastic horn blowing showed!

I'm very pleased with their creepiness, and the horn kicks butt. I also need to clearly modify the volume settings. They ran fine on that test loop (22" radius, 4% grade).

I went ahead and put Sargants in this right from the get go, and the passenger car at the lead is a transitional car. Once I get a transitional Sargant/Kadee freight car sorted out, I'll see how they do with a long(er) freight drag (I still don't' have a lot of rolling stock....).

Cheers!

I had a chance this weekend to throw all (and mind you it's not a alot) of my rolling stock on the layout to test these guys pulling power. 22 cars (mix of 50's and 40's) later, they crawled, on the second throttle notch, up the 4% grade. No effort, no spin, no choking.

I wouldn't be surprised if they could do 20 each.

Per the sound card, I disovered a really cool feature that other folks with QSI chips will know, the shutdown feature. You can shut down the locos, and they go into a full powering down scheme, including the appropiate low idle, air releases, etc. It's really cool!