Lionel S-2

[Anonymous]

If this question has been asked already...my appologies. I don't get to check the forum as often as I'd like. But her goes.............

Has anyone purchased one of Lionel's S-2 electric (prototypical) locomotives yet? If so, how is it? Does it run well?

[Anonymous]

Yes, it is a nice loco. Good looking, die cast makes it kind of heavy. Beautifully detailed. Sounds are incredible. I thought RS-4 was pretty impressive, RS-5 is outstanding, It''s only got about 30-45 minutes running time at this point. It will be pulling the Christmas tree train on the 4'x5' "oval" under the tree. I had to stop playing with it to put up the tree.

This is my fist Odyssey equiped loco. I will wait till a full break in before final comment on Oddysey. The inital response isn't that great but I've never been a fan of cruise control anyway. I just turned it off which is a nice feature to me. I wish ALL vendors put an actual on/off switch for this feature instead of soft keys/transformer gyrations.

The other thing about the engine is that it realy wants O-36 or larger curves. The rigid wheelbase of the "drivers" plus the details hanging off the side make it unlikely to gracefully handle tighter curves.

Overall I'm very happy with the unit. The yellow accents and additional details make it even better looking than the S-1 from last year.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the info. It is my hope that if there were any issues with the S-1 they will be fixed with this one.

[James G. Gress]

I am anxious to purchase a new S-2 as well but am concerned by the required radius of 36". My layout has only 31" curves. Any luck on running it on the 31"?

[Anonymous]

I will check the unit out on O-32 (GG) and O-31 (Tubular). One note of caution. The unit is top heavy because of the die cast shell. At high speed on tight turns it will roll over (even on O-36).

OK, I checked. Not a chance. On O-32 Gargraves, parts of the coupler mechanism are touching the flanges of the pilot wheels. I would take the Lionel recommendation about minimum radius very seriously.

[James G. Gress]

OK, thanks so much.

JIm Gress