I was fortunate to be able to order of these locs and it is a beauty. I know some have reported a possible gear box issue. I will leave that for others to discuss in detail on what they may find @harmonyards. I was fortunate and mine does not appear to have any drive train issues. My only issue was with the front truck. When the loc runs through my Ross switches (going straight, not even a curve), the front truck rides up on the swivel rail and derails causing a dead short. Going slow, less than speed step 10, it will make it through. Anything faster, it derails. I inspected the truck and found no wheel wobble, gauging looks good as compared to other engines. When watching the front truck run on straight level track, i saw that the truck always drifted to the left side and is always tight against the rail. If I push the truck over, it just drifts right back. Since its so tight to the rail, it is able to pick the swivel rail and jump it causing the derailment. I removed the truck and saw nothing wrong. The only thing this truck has, is a grounding wire attached to the casting and then wraps around the truck and attached to the truck screw holding it to the engine. Not sure why this extra grounding wire is needed. I removed the wire thinking that is causing the truck to drift to one side. YUP! That was it. With the wire removed, the front truck now rides dead straight and through my ross switches without any issue. I see no electrical loss, no flickering of any kind, and the engine appears to be perfectly find without the wire. @Dave Olson why does the front truck have a grounding wire? Smoke is very good for both the stack and whistle steam. I have not tried bluetooth operation yet. Stay tuned!
Other than this one small issue, I ran the engine front and back pulling a heavy load and its a beautiful engine. Its smaller than a K4 which should work well on a lot of layouts. Lionel added some nice details to the engine - tender truck chains, cab curtains, two sliding cab windows on each side, close coupling to the tender, opening hatches on the tender, whistle cords. It comes with a dummy coupler for double heading as well. Overall I think Lionel did a great job on this engine.
