Folks,
This is a great looker right down to the yellowed lighting and the bell, that leaps out. I'm breaking it in, using D.C. And 16 3/8 super elevated Unitrack. Will extended break in quiet this thing, or is it "destined to sit on the shelf, until I have wider curves"?
They're petty noisy. I don't know that there's much that can be done about it.
-Mark
....what Spookshow said.........................
These things always have been noisy. The old ones, without the factory DCC were even more noisy. There is nothing wrong with it, it is simply noisy.
The funny thing is that the decoder seems to absorb some noise. I fried the decoder on one, so I had to wire around it. The result is something that makes more racket than the newest version but still less than the old one.
They will run nicely at slow to average speeds, and funny, but my old ones will pull six Rivarossi heavyweights, on Rivarossi trucks, up a one per-cent grade at thirty SMPH. The prototypes would not do that. I have not tried to see what the new one will pull. They run nicely but noisily.
Thanks guys. I read about the noise, before I bought it. It does seem to be gear related. I'll get used to it.
The design of the chassis and especially the shell contribute to the racket. The long metal frame conducts the sound while the shell serves as an echo chamber. The result is predictable. Many of the prototypes were quite noisy, as well. The B-mann looks much like an Australian doodlebug. There is a video on youtube of it.