On the other hand, brass cabooses are a wonderful way to make a train a lot more prototypical. They all need new trucks a new couplers to run well, but that's a lot easier than remotoring, and regearing a brass steam locomotive. Plus having to do various electrical isolations to allow installation of DCC.

I have two brass cabooses from each of the following roads – Missouri Pacific, Frisco, and Cotton Belt. They are beautiful and really top off my locals. I'm about to retire at least a dozen plastic cabooses that have been sidelined by these brass beauties. The MP and Frisco ones came factory painted and lettered.  The Cotton Belt cars are both fairly crudely painted aftermarket, but done tolerably enough to leave alone for now.

You bought them already?  Be prepared.  Mechanically, brass locomotives are from the Model Railroad Jurassic. No matter how beautiful they are, many of them run like coffee grinders. Yours may not, but the brass locomotive experience often includes installation of new can motors and gear boxes, if operation of them is desired rather than shelf display.

I have a very beautiful brass Southern Pacific 4–4–0, but between the impossibility of installing a front coupler and the huge prehistoric open frame DC motor sticking up in the cab, I'll never do anything with it. I'm just holding it in the collection for the young modeler who will inherit my collection eventually.

2 sets of four wheels each is any four axle diesel electric.

Without information about what the engine actually is, no one can help

Quentin, the nickel plate Berkshire you just bought is going to have wires between the engine and the tender also.

I stand corrected.  A project engine that runs well.

They do come up on eBay now and then.  Might wait for one that isn't from overseas.  Could possibly be be hidden customs charges unknown when ordering.

Don't forget the Bachmann MP light mountain either. I've seen them a few times on eBay as well. None of these engines come with DCC and sound though, be ready to shell out for those items and the install.

There has to be plenty of those Berks around either on eBay, or at some discount house somewhere. I would not touch one called a project. They're telling you right upfront that there's problems with it, that's why it's not a running locomotive. If you need parts for one you already have, that would be the way to get them since there's probably very few available anymore from Bachmann.

I'd like to convert one of those engines to a Missouri Pacific/I-GN 1900, but the domes and the number boards and stuff on top of the smokebox front need just too much radical surgery to make it practical. Plus, the drivers are a good bit taller than on the MP engines. The nickel plate engines were known for running manifest freights at passenger train speed across a bridge route, unlike the slower-speed more typical freights that the MP engines with lower drivers handled.  Between the tall drivers and the extremely involved boiler alterations, it's a job for a much younger modeler with better eyes.  Besides, I am running a branch line. What would a 2–8–4 be doing running down my little branch?

Quentin, every HO steam locomotive on earth has wires between the locomotive and the tender. You cannot escape that. Back in the 1960s, when DC ruled the model railroad rail, and only one wire was required from the tender to the motor and the locomotive, wireless drawbars that conducted power between the locomotive and the tender began to become popular. But with today's engines, there's just too many functions in play to have only one wire between the two units.

There are ways to redirect these wires around to not cause problems. Sometimes, they can be quite squirrelly in refusing to be positioned properly. But with work and patience, it can be done. Sometimes you have to far–connect the engine and tender to allow stiff wires some room to flex. It's true, that wrongly directed wires can cause the tender to chronically derail. But I wouldn't let that keep me from buying an engine I want.

I'd have to count again, but I believe I have at least 50 HO steam locomotives, all with DCC and sound, every one of them with wires between the engine and the tender. I'd have to say that 3/4 of them needed some kind of doctoring to keep the wires from derailing the tender on some curve or switch or something. Fixing that problem is just one more skill  to add to your Model Railroad toolbox.

Quentin, saw this on eBay

https://www.ebay.com/itm/155405470177?hash=item242ee349e1:g:gHEAAOSwjZFj6R~6&amdata=enc%3AAQAHAAAAsHOnZL6Pj4rb9PnkJFSiWbIuvW1CMdpjAZpaEXtex6rlhNfAgeFLlW7LUAAkfBk3TdLlAphulFCrAV6eDDrg75tfi%2FqDxOL1MRQRW%2B0IRlTrfFLNHjeBJzKHUHksJQDTys7PstcKKloPfgLinA7ls5Fn5h%2Fv98hN3i6q%2FEtVdQ3orebKSccfUZSz%2FQ3MylBelfY4cyYlH93IUdZx%2BMdLesX0C2CrSF9sgB1KmfuUUFsU%7Ctkp%3ABk9SR6jnoKjKYQ

On steam engines, CV 116 is the chuff rate.

Cv 116 is the chuff rate in sound value.  If there is automatic silencing, I'd like to know.  Lack of it is my biggest problem with sound value.

I have tsunami2-2 in about 3/4 of my engines now.  The rest are a mixture of older tsunami's, the old Bachman Soundtraxx on-board sound, and a couple of Econamis.  I've worked with Soundtraxx products for so long I've become one with them.  I have a couple of BLI engines with paragon sound and dislike it for many reasons.

Why would anyone want automatic sounds?  Except maybe on a continuously running display layout.

Sound value, to me, has a lot of missteps in the choices of sounds and options made available. Probably the biggest erroneous omission, to me, is CV 113, the automatic silencing and keeping an engine silent until activated.  And the coupler crash.  Why the automatic sounds are taking up bytes in this basic level system is beyond me. Along with headlight dimming, which is a diesel era affectation and useless on steam locomotives.

I'd still rather any Soundtraxx products over TCS, though.  TCS is keeping me from buying a new decapod.

Look at that perfectly ballasted, perfectly neat, and flawless track work. Those were the days!

https://tycotrain.tripod.com/bachmannhoscalelocomotives/id74.html

https://forum.mrhmag.com/post/bq237-by-bachman-12214421