Although I've never owned MTH, I've always understood them to be good locos. I'm interested in anything Alco, including the MTH PAs.
It sounds like you had problems out of the box. Did you advise MTH, and, if so, what was their response?
Rick Krall
Hello, I too have recently purchased a set of MTH PA-PB-PAs in ATSF livery. When they arrived, the two A units looked lob sided on the track, and none of the couplers lined up. After examining them with the shells removed, it appeared there was flash on the chassis that was not allowing either the trucks to sit well, or the shell to sit well. carefully machined the chassis (with it stripped down so as not to damage the running gear and electronics, removed the couplers and fitted proper KDs (not the ones supplied), bodies now straight, couplers now line up and work. Take them to my local club to run after programming them with their road numbers. Bummer, no go, they sucked out the power from the layout, shorted just putting them on the track, and the crappy sound when I finally got them going were most disappointing. Further the rotten decoders did not respond to the same sound on or off commands as all my other sound decoded locos. Both my home layout and the club run NCE. Ripping out the crap MTH decoders tonight, and replacing them with ESU Select sound decoders and high base speakers. Very expensive and time consuming fix, but at last a well running set. I will never purchase MTH again!