I think the bachmann christmas set is 1:22 or 1:24, those would be the "big haulers". The bachmann spectrum line is 1:20.

Man, that really stinks!. I got a connie a while back and other than the damage I did when taking it out of the box the loco was perfect.
My shay though, looked like a 5 year old did the soldering, it was horrid. Good thing I gut them and put in batteries and airwire.
Sorry to hear about your loco hope it all works out for you.

Man, I really need to get one of those.

Personally I would go with the narrow guage. Bachmann and a few others make readily available equipment.

As far as power goes, I'll tell ya a quick story:
My first experience with Large scale RRing was with a Bachmann climax that I had bought and modified to DCC. I was excited to take it to a friend of a friends house who had an outdoor layout. 6 people were present, the layout owner and 4 others me included had "sparky" locos that were equipped with DCC. We put all our locos on the track and.... nothin'. My climax shuddered so bad around the track it was sad. So, we got out the cleaning equipment and set to work. In the process one person broke a power feed that had to be replaired and another person (me) knocked the track out of the ballast which then had to be repaired. While I was getting a crash course in track ballasting I noticed the 6th guy (did ya forget about him?) was happily running his connie and doing a lil switching in the yard. I wanted to know why he could be running when I was cleaning track for an hour.  I got to talking to him and he explained batteries and airwire to me. He let me run his connie and I was a battery convert right then and there. Now when we go to run there are 4 people cleaning track and 2 guys running trains right from the get go. Personally, I will never clean track again.
As far as Live steam goes, I would love to have one. They take time to "steam up" so you can't just get them out and run them like the others and they are more maintenance heavy, but like was said they are real steam engines. Just real small. I believe most burn alcohol or butane. a select fuel burn anthracite coal.
hope this helps

I found the xacto knife to work well. I also work with them on a soft surface like paper towell or white cloth. They tend to bounce and roll less.

When I was into N scale there were many reasons I bought Bachmann stuff. First, the spectrum quality is great. Second, when it isn't great they have a bullet proof warranty. I owned many different makes of steamers and diesels.
I bought one of the "legendary" Kato Mikados  for un ungawdly amount and it was the biggest turd of my fleet. After pulling teeth with Kato and waiting forever they replaced it. I bought a Bachmann NKP Mallet for a very reasonable price (like $90) and it was one  of the front runners of my fleet.
As far as couplers go, bite the bullet and go with the Micro Trains LIne. You can either replace the coupler or the entire truck. Their quality in my opinion (for what that's worth) is unmatched and then you have a standard for your railroad.
I have moved onto Large Scale and now my entire fleet save one are all Bachmann. Again I have had no problems with any of the locos and I feel that the detail is top notch.

I just picked up one of these as well at my Local Hobby Shop. Is adding a decoder as easy as pulling out the insert on the tender board and putting in the decoder?
Sound isn't that important to me, I like it, but find it gets annoying after a couple minutes.