Actually it's much easier, the dummy unit also has the board with the 8-pin plug on it. So no cutting is required, just plug in the decoder!

Are they too big and rubbing against the bottom of the car? If so I guess you could get 33's and see if they fit better.

Yeah the makerwould really help(I.e athearn, bli, rivirossi?) i know bli comes with a small chip that can be plugged into the 8-pin socket to run on their sound controller.

Generally all American brand and some foreign ones will work on any dcc system, when it comes to decoders, if they meet nmra standards then they will work with the ezcommand. The only loss is the functions above 9.

Well yoou can really only get so much quality out of a grass mat, they are just to perfect looking for me. But I once used the woodland scenics version and it seemed pretty good. Seeing as they are the most common brand of grass they are I'm assuming the best color and texture. I can only assume the others might be worse in color. Also I'm not sure if the others do but the woodland scenics one has grass that can be scraped off and it'll form to hills with a heat gun.

I started soldering at 14, the source makes a great starter set. It's a great skill to have, especially in model railroading! allot of elements in the hobby can require it. Just sayin'...

Those cabooses are also pretty small in comparison to say a more modern wide vision one if it is the one I've got in mind.

Really? I find these beutiful models, the see through walkways and full grab iron details! I never had to install the weights however I did remove the coil covers which was a little frightening but nothing broke. I was really happy with this model in comparison to my walthers versions with much less detail. However keeping in mind the coil car design in general from both manufacturers have very delicate parts, mainly the stacking braces that I too have broken over time on others. So I guess I'm trying to say it's not the quality of the model that's te issue(even though metal grab irons would be nice...) they are very delicate cars and by nature must be handled carefully! But there's nothing a little glue can't fix

Bachmann actually just came out with some, also I believe those are the only ones produced.

Being a teenager myself, I know it is very possible for someone to spell like that as I've seen it tons. I've seen posts on here where somehow no punctuation was used?!? How that's possible, I don't know but it happens allot. Just thought I'd throw my thoughts in there.

Quote from: ABC on January 24, 2010, 11:17:41 AM
They haven't even made American models of those yet.
Athearn and Kato make AC4400's, and Athearns can be found online for $50.
Intermountain makes ES44AC's and can be found online for $150. I don't see es44s on their website, for all I know I thought only t55 and olm made them? Plus since t55 sold their tooling to athearn their no longer available in anything but brass. I ask because I would so buy one! Just gotta find one.
One last note, I'm pretty sure the United States is Bachmann's biggest market, so it would make the most business sense to concentrate on the market where you can sell the most products. On the other hand, Canada is likely Bachmann's second largest market. Basically, it seems if the Canadian model is identical to the American model then Bachmann will go ahead and make it in Canadian liveries. But, I don't think a great deal of Americans favour the Canadian roads over the American roads. However, Canada has a lot of nice things like Niagara Falls and plenty of snow for the most part.

Sound is a great feature, well worth it in my opinion however it's not for everyone. As for smoke, it's terrible in HO scale, G scale it's great because it can be fan driven which makes it actually look real. Plus the track does get VERY dirty as well. Also I must add, please try to use the spell check button at the bottom by the post button...sorry it's just hard to read.

I know exactly what your talking about, they were made by life like, and came in some of their sets. I don't believe they were sold seperatly, but at the train shows they were most likely just used ones. 

Well it sounds like talgo trucks(aka truck mount couplers. I don't belive bachmann has a fix for those but kadee does. They sell couplers with special spacers that snap in to the pockets to hold in the couplers properly.

Actually I noticed the same thing with my acela and a digitrax decoder, it was quite slow and was supprisingly out run by a pair of sd60s pulling a 50car train! However I haven't even looked into a solution yet. Just wondering if it might be something in the acelas circuit board? I also notice it has a very realistic yet odd amount of momentum with the decoder even though the decoder has no momentum programmer in.