While I agree about the gentleman's trackage in question, he still has good points. IOW, he has other BLI locos that don't have issues on his track. However, I think the fact that his track undulates is the primary culprit.
The issue with the Blue Goose should exist for any Hudson they've made - the NYC Dreyfuss and the un-streamlined versions, by BLI. Yet, you've never heard of any issue with pickup using those. Undulating track is probably the worst offender with steam loco pickups. They naturally cover a long distance with electrical pickups because of a steam loco's natural length. However, undulating track will cause that long span of pickup distance to fail. The Blue Goose has one polarity pickup on two driver axles (the third axle has traction tires) and the opposite polarity pickup on each of the tender trucks. It's been suggested that BLI should've used both polarity pickups on the drivers and tender trucks, but I haven't heard any issues with any other BLI Hudson.
The light and smoke is definitely a good point. It seems a bit odd that BLI chose not to put those on the circuit with the current-keeper. Maybe the smoke generator draws so much current that it constantly taps out the capacitor, but that doesn't explain leaving the lighting out. A smoke generator "blinking" over dirty track would go unnoticed by everyone - a light, no.
All that said, I have both the Blue Goose and Big Boy. Unfortunately, I have no layout built (yet!) to really tell you how they operate under those conditions. I've seen no indication there's any issue with either one on test tracks, though. That Blue Goose is a beautiful engine. You'll never, ever see another model railroad engine with that kind of spectacular coloring.
I don't know how the pickups are run on the Big Boy, but it's so long, I doubt it matters. It's almost fully diecast and is a real beast! Just MHO, but I don't know how anyone can build a layout without a Big Boy to test it. I mean, everyone is going to get a Big Boy eventually, right?
I have a challenger and it is phenomenal. I also have a Blue goose and a few other paragon 4's. They too have been great. Watching those vids by a certain gentalman complaining about BLI quality leads one to conclude that he is on a mission to ruin BLI's rep while pretending to want to like them. Rule of thumb for electric trains- wheels must make contact with rails. This youtubers layout would make any loco stutter, cough and weeze.
I am considering the BLI Blue Goose HO locomotive but after seeing a few YouTube videos it looks like it has some issues with power pickup. Specifically, not enough wheels are used for pickup and the smoke unit/headlight are on a separate circuit, which causes flicker and loss of power at times.
Does BLI get around to fixing these types of issues, or are we basically "stuck" with these defects and buyer beware? The model is expensive ~$800, so I am somehwat shocked and disapppointed that such an expensive and otherwise beautiful model would have these issues.
I'm also looking at the BLI Big Boy - it looks like this model works quite well, any first hand experience with this model?
Thanks in advance.