Are these BLI locomotives wotht the price at hobby shows? I know that the QSI locomotives are no longer made by BLI. What is the quality of these models interms of running and did they have any significant problems? I always stay clear of the Athearn 2-8-2 locomotives for this reason.
Which engine is it? I have a power house Heavy Mike and to be honest I don't like it. Far as the quality and pulling I am fine with that part. But, do to the small tender the sounds blows. There is no room in the tender for bigger speakers, I have toyed with the idea of installing a bigger speaker in a live stock car and by passing the stock speakers.
Figures, I love Monon and I have not powered it up for a year.
Cuda Ken
I hate Rust
I assume you are referring to the BLI 2-8-2's. (Your header indicates a 2-8-8 )
I acquired a couple of BLI 2-8-2 steam engines. I am only now running them to break them in..
One is a Paragon Light Mikado and the other is the Powerhouse Heavy Mikado. Both of these have the DC?DCC QSI sound decoder installed. My layout has a 3% incline and neither engine has any problems pulling my 4 car Rivarossi 60' passenger cars in addition to one or two express cars.
Both of these engines are featured in the 2005 BLI catalogue. The Powerhouse was marketed with a MRSP of $229 and the Paragon at $299. I see no real difference between the two engines other than the obvious Light vs Heavy boiler aspects. The Paragon did come with an additional set of drivers with traction tires.
Both of these engines are superb runners and the sound is at least to my ears of decent quality for 2005 technology. I also noticed the two I have were both made in Korea, while others I have seen were made in China.
In addition to the 2-8-2 Heavy Mike the BLI stock cars were also noted to be Powerhouse products.
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I was disappointed with the sound:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPVlAhK2j2o&feature=related
Modeling the Rio Grande Southern First District circa 1938-1946 in HOn3.
I have a pair of the USRA 2-8-2's from the original run(with the QSI sound decoder). BLI does not use QSI anymore from what I have seen(they have some other sound unit). Mine had the limited capability decoders due the the MTH lawsuit. I have since upgraded the chips in these two engines and the sound is better. One of the issues is that the sound is turned up to 'full' volume, and the speaker is in a hollow plastic tender. I programmed it down to about 1/2 volume, and added some foam to the interior of the tender - what a difference. The whistle/bell are much better on the new decoder chips. The $25-30 each for the new upgrade chips was a good investment. The engine pull well and have smooth slow speed operation. They handle a 16 car freight up my 2.7% grades with no problems.
Jim
Modeling BNSF and Milwaukee Road in SW Wisconsin
I have two BLI USRA Heavy 2-8-2's, one is an orginal Powerhouse model, one is a recent BlueLine model.
Both had "issues" that I had to correct. Both were purchased with a number of modifications in mind from the start.
I do not use sound or DCC and my kit bashing project included removing the sound/DCC by relacing the factory tenders with Bachmann long haul USRA tenders. I will say that the QSI sound in the Powerhouse model was somewhat better than the BlueLine model. No HO onboard sound has good sound quality in my view.
Both locos were less than smooth running and required some work to get them running smooth with no binds or surges. The Powerhouse model required complete disassembly and driver re-quarting to get it to run correctly.
Broadway was very helpful about parts, but did not have everything needed to fix these locos so I "rebuilt" some parts myself. I also found the driver springing and weight balance to be off, making the locos sit unevenly on the track. I actually removed the driver springs from the front axle to correct this.
Both locos now have traction tires, extra weight and the Bachmann tenders. Both locos run well and look nice with their new tenders. They pull very well and each can pull 45+ cars on level track.
I gave the original tenders to a friend who uses DCC/sound.
It was a successful project, however I don't see any more of these in my future. Just another example of how my experainces with BLI have not shown me any great quality advantage over Bachmann or other suposedly "lesser" brands.
Sheldon
I have 4 of these locos that I picked when they were still Korean made in the "red" boxes and either I was lucky or the quality was better as I have no complaints as to their running qualities.
That said, I do agree with Sheldon that "any" sound equiped engine is not going to have good sound quality just because of the size. I am also of the opinion that 99.9% of these "sound equiped" engines are run with the volumne set way to loud, your wife shouldn't be complaining that she can't get to sleep because of the "racket" coming from the basement.
If the sound is set to a more correct and "scale" level most any sound equiped engine sounds much, much better. For my tastes you should be able to hear it standing next to it, if you are in the next room or upstairs you have it TOO loud!! I have been to a couple of layouts where there were sound equiped engines running and everytime they got close the conversation stopped. Not because we were fasinated by the sound, but because it was too stinking loud.
Also I, like Sheldon, do not use DCC so the decoder electronics in there is just another piece of electronic garbage to break requiring more time spent repairing something I don't have a use for anyhow.
And before you get all upset, I realize a lot of fellows like that stuff, I'm just not one of them.
Overall rating on these engines by me would be a strong 7
By the way, BLI was having a sale on these engines, check their website for details.............
Mark
I have six of these from various runs in both light and heavy and both red box and blue box, even have the factory prototype from the "scratch builders" sale at BLI headquarters.
All of them run great and have had no mechanical issues.
I did reprogram them for about 30% sound volume, and to start at a crawl on speed step 1.
Two of them were used to test pulling power, and IIRC averaged about 30 free rolling 40 ft cars on level track.
These are the mainstays of my fleet and get used nearly every time.
I'm planning to convert all but two to PRR H10 class 2-8-0 Consols using MDC (or Gem, if I can afford it) boilers.
One is done and sees regular service.
One of the unconverted ones will remain a USRA L2 class 2-8-2, and the other will donate it's chassis to a Bowser L1 boiler and BLI K4 tender.
All but two (one being the prototype) came from ebay for $120-130.
I only have 2 factory installed HO locomotives with sound. The BLI Southern 2-8-2 and a P2K Southern GP30 and unless one comes my way via a sweet deal I don't plan to get any more. For either after about 15 minutes I either turn the sound way down or switch to another loco. I like my BLI 2-8-2 in every other way but I wouldn't have bought it at even 50% off retail. So to me it would depend on the price if I saw one at a show.
I was hoping the sound thing would die off after a year or so because I do have DCC and would prefer to buy locos with the decoder installed. But now only Bachmann offers locos with DCC and no sound.
BTW I know it's relatively easy to add a decoder to DCC ready locos. Fortunately I have all the locos I will ever need and I am now working on converting the older non DCC engines to DCC.
I can't speak from personal experience regarding the BLI Mike but I started out with 1 BLI M1 and now have four residing in my roundhouse.Excellent pullers, nice sound great detail and all of mine are the older red box paragon models. I would agree with you 100% when it comes to the Athearn light mike. As was told to me by an unnamed source at Athearn they are great looking locomotive if you just want to park on a sidig but if you want it to pull any reasonable number of cars it ain't worth a plug nickle.