I had a chance to inspect this model and the detail and paint job both seem first class. The room was rather large to judge the sound however.
I wish the UP would bring the prototype back for another visit to Milwaukee!
Dave Nelson
Greetings,
I received my Athearn N Scale Challenger on Friday. It has been over a year since the announcement of this steam locomotive. I believe this is the first N Scale Steam Locomotive to come with factory installed DCC Sound Decoder. When I receieved the locomotive I took down to my layout which is equipped with NCE DCC. The first thing I heard was when I put the locomotive onto the tracks it started "breathing" with an occasional pop off hiss. The sound was very nice. Using the default #3 setting I ran the locomotive back and forth and it ran very smooth right out of the box. The nice surprise was the sound of the double exhaust. The bell has a very nice sound. My only slight disappointment was the whistle, of which there are three different sounds aren't quite what I thought they would be. There is a whole list of sounds available.
I took the locomotive to a local train show today and was able to run it on both DC and DCC layouts. The locomotive easily transistioned from DC to DCC. I had trouble with the wireless remote control included with the locomotive, it didn't work at all with the locomotive on the DC layout. All of the sounds worked with the DCC layout.
Pulling power with the Challenger was very good. I was able to pull 36 coal cars on a flat layout with curves. 21 Passenger Cars were also easily pulled on the flat layout. The Challenger pulled 20 cars on a layout with 2% grade and curves.
Overall I am extremely pleased with locomotive, below are some photos of the Challenger on my home layout.
Keith Schmidt
Keith Schmidt KC9LHK You don’t bring nothin with you here and you can’t nothin back, I ain’t never seen a hearse with a luggage rack. George Strait Check out Flickr Train Photo Page