I know that I'm years late on this one, but I thought I'd pass along my experience with this unit as there are several still out there to be had NIB. I initially was looking for a MTH premier unit and had several slip thru my fingers on "the bay" as I had a bid ceiling set for myself. While searching I stumbled upon several NIB (new in box) K-line units that were priced very affordably. After doing some research here and elsewhere, I decided for the price I'd give it a try. My unit arrived yesterday and my initial reaction when opening the box was shock! I was shocked how well detailed it was, with the see-thru grills with the spinning fans beneath them, directional lighting, engineer figures, tubular railing, it is very slick looking. Mine is a "Virginian" scheme, and the finish is flawless.
After greasing the gears, oiling the pickup rollers and priming the smoke unit, I decided to turn her loose. She traversed my small 7x8 layout very smoothly, having no overhang issues or problems negotiating my 031 tubular layout. What I did notice, as is typical with a lot of new units such as Williams, is the unreal amount of acceleration it had, as well as the low voltage level to keep it moving briskly. It had so much power in-fact, that it would open its coupler and separate from its 9 car consist when opening the voltage too sharply. In addition, the lights were very dim and the smoke unit barely received enough voltage to wisp out smoke, even at a pretty fair clip. When sitting in neutral on higher voltage settings, the fan driven smoke unit will fog the room in a heartbeat, so I knew what had to be done.
I removed the shell and went about wiring the motors in series instead of the factory parallel wiring configuration. This should effectively double the voltage to the lights and smoke unit and half the voltage to the motors for a given "throttle" position. Another thing I did while I was in there was reverse the leads on the e-unit circuit-board to reverse the default starting direction of the e-unit sequence. The Virginian FM is wired to default start in "long hood" as the forward setting. I prefer to run my FM short hood (even if not prototypical), and I also turned around the engineer figures to make them face short hood forward. After tidying up the wires and placing the shell back on it was time to see what she could really do.
This time smoke nearly immediately began to bellow from the exhaust, even in slower cruising speeds. The top speed is slow enough to not derail on 031, but fast enough to keep you interested, and the lights now burn much brighter. The smoke unit on this thing is phenomenal compared to my postwar, Williams and new Lionel stuff. Admittedly, I don't own any of the "high end" (read: pricy) new Lionel stuff or any MTH units with smoke units with which to compare, but this unit is very impressive. Overall I'm extremely pleased with this K-line offering, and pleasantly surprised at the level of detail at this price point. Thanks, Eric
Great reveiw. I also have one of the trainmasters in PRR lettering and it is one of my favorite engines.
Heres a photo of mine.
My K-line Trainmaster remains to this day the only train items I've ever preordered. I have the Lackawanna with TMCC. It still, to this day, has to be on the list of all time toy train greatest deals, with a price of $225 straight from the manufacturer.
Mine is still one of my favorite engines-a great runner and a great puller with good sounds and a good smoke unit.
At the time these first came out, these were the only 3-rail H-24-66s with etched fan grills, as opposed to the molded plastic on the Lionel(postwar-design), MTH, and Williams models. Lionel has since made a new H-24-66 which is perhaps slightly better than the K-line model, but also three times the price.
For the money, the K-line model can't be beat. This especially becomes obvious when you compare the $225 fully-loaded price of the K-line Club Trainmasters to the $229 bare-bones price of the Williams model.
Man, I miss K-line, and espcially their club offerings.
jefelectric wrote:There is one in the new K-Line by Lionel catalog, BUT the price is a good bit higher. Those old low prices are why there is no K-Line anymore.
Made some good products though.
God bless TCA 05-58541 Benefactor Member of the NRA, Member of the American Legion, Retired Boss Hog of Roseyville , KC&D Qualified
do you guys know how to get these out of locked direction it only goes forward,can't find a direction switch.i just recieved a virgiain fm off ebay.thanks
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