Beep power?

I've found mine to be durable other than some coupler issues.  They have two small can motors and a traction tire.  I added a couple 2 oz fishing weights to the inside of mine which helped with pulling.  I pulled a 7 car freight with it on my Christmas display last year with no issues.  Should be OK for a couple more.

Several of us run them day and night, or so it seems, on our All Aboard Fastracker layouts with never a problem. Very durable and very reliable. Check out my link and you can videos of them running there.

I'd hesitate to run it for long stretches pulling more than 5-6 cars, you may overheat the motors or the electronics.

We usually run on Fastrack with the usual 5-6 cars and I have converted several of mine to TMCC since I did find issues with the center pick wire melting in both. One I have had a bad electronics board and that was my first TMCC unit. I have since converted them to use LED lighting and electrocouplers. We have run the out of the box BEEPs for hours without any issues but we do run them with lightweight cars and keep them simple.

BEEPS and BEEFs (same chassis, different plastic body) are very durable and not prone to overheating.  Maybe you could overheat one by really loading it but I doubt it.  I have about thirty in all, and have run them hard.  Few problems.  

    I usually run two BEEPS together, connected by tether to assure better electrical pickup, with a light load - only about eight cars.  But I know a pair will pull about 20 cars or twelve aluminum 18" passenger cars: done both a few times.

I am so excited! I just bought a used N&W Beep on ebay for $20.64 + 7.03 shg. I kept waiting to be outbid but only 5 people bid on it. Aidan, age 3, will be so thrilled; he has wanted one since the first time he saw one.

[RMT O Scale 4241 GP Beep Powered Locomotive Norfolk & Western NW 503 C8 rate]

BEEPs are so fun.  I've bought about 24 of them and based on experience, they are much more sensitive to having dirty wheels than most locos - they have only four wheels through which to get power and one or two of those are traction tires and so not quite as connected.  Even a little dirt and they stutter and they sometimes stall when going through dead spots in switches at low speeds.  This is why more recetn BEEPS come with the tether than permits one to link the electrrics of several together so they all draw power through one-anothers wheels - makes them smoother overall, and particularly through switches.

Aidan and his parents wanted to give me the Beep for Christmas so we didn't run it until last Wednesday. It is so much quieter than my other engines but I had to set the throttle on 16, which is 2 to 3 volts higher than my Lionel engines require. And, Lee, it does stall on the switches sometimes. Aidan wants it to have a horn; is that easy/inexpensive to do? I'm not opposed to a little building with a horn/whistle inside if that's less expensive. 

Any suggestions?

Yes, single BEEPS do stall on some switches.  My solution is RMT's - buy two and tie them with the teather and then they will absolutely not stall.  They also just run a  bit smoother at all other times: alone, even under the best of circumstances, four wheels and two center pickups don't pick up power as continuously as eight wheels and four center pickups will . . .

I've never added a horn.  There is not a lot of room inside a BEEP unless you go high into the cockpit( my point being it would be visible through the windows): I've put figures and a full cab in many of mine but never tried to add a circuit board.

An easy idea I did do - still have it somewhere.  Buy a used whistle tender and mount a boxcar body on it.   You have a whistle - sort of a horn.  Maybe even a bell it if has it . . .

"Buy a used whistle tender and mount a boxcar body on it."

Is that a simple bolt-on change or does it require cutting plastic and adding couplers?

They perform much better if you tether 2 of them. That will eliminate most running problems and give you a little more pulling power...

ittproducts.com has eight different diesel horns avialable.  You could mount the board and components in a boxcar.  Or for horn, bell and engine sounds how about a diesel railsounds boxcar from lionel.

Joe

To add a horn, the simplest solution would be to go on eBay and look for a Lionel Railsounds car. When Railsounds first came out, before TMCC, Lionel made several cars with built-in sound units. They came in steam or diesel. Most of them were boxcars, but I seem to remember a caboose as well. They were fairly expensive when new, but that was 15-20 years ago and I suspect you could get one pretty cheap on eBay.

Or, you could get an MRC Sounder and mount it in a boxcar. That would take some work as you would have to get trucks with pickup rollers. If you have a lighted caboose, you could stick the Sounder in the caboose, since a lighted caboose already has the rollers. Or you could pick up just a horn unit on eBay and go from there. 

One other thing would be to get a Lionel horn building. Lionel makes, or used to make, a passenger depot and a freight depot with a diesel horn built in. The advantage to that is that it's cheap, it's easy, and if you get any other engines without a horn, you've got a horn for them, too.

I purchased a Christmas Beep (road #1225) at the start of December.  It would only go forward (no neutral or reverse) haltingly.  After one hour of operation it stopped working altogether.

I wrote to Walter both before and after Christmas about returning the unit for repair, but have not yet received any form of reply.

I have all four of the Peeps Christmas passenger or baggage cars,  In all cases the screws that hold the drawbars in place (those that permit the drawbar to pivot left/right) come loose after a few minutes of operations through the curves on my oval track under the Christmas tree.  I've removed and thread locked all of them in an attempt to stop reoccurrence.