Questionfor the Bach Man

[trainman203]

Has there been a second run of the consolidation lettered for Southern Railway?  Particularly with Econami decoder, instead of the previous sound value decoder.

I just bought a consolidation lettered for Santa Fe number 2525.  It came with an Econami decoder, which is a big improvement over the previous sound value. But there is no indication on the box that there's a different decoder, it just says sound value, even though an Econami is in the engine.  If there has been another run of the southern railway version of this engine, and if it has the Econami, I would like to know how I could be certain if I bought one that it would contain the Econami decoder.

[Yard Master]

Hi Trainman,

We switched to Econami decoders for HO Sound Value locomotives starting this year. The roadnames currently in our 2023 catalog are the only ones so far that have been made with Econami decoders (item #s 57907-10). All of the previous releases (item numbers 57901-06) have the "legacy" Sound Value decoder.

We don't have any current plans to offer the Southern 2-8-0 with Econami, but if we do reintroduce it, it will be clearly identified on the packaging in the future.

[trainman203]

Thank you.

[trainman203]

When the Southern consolidation is run again, please offer it in a different road number besides 630.