I never knew any of the smaller Polar engines came with the whistle smoke. Is this feature as good as on the pricey engines or is it just a sells item? Thanks Dave
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It works pretty good, I had one and I was going to convert it to TMCC, but I ended up selling it, I don't really need more projects, I need less. 
Although the smoke unit is a puffer (mechanical smoke unit), the whistle smoke was driven by a small fan that was triggered by the whistle circuit. I think it put out more smoke than the main smoke unit. 
I have this loco and I run it under the tree with the newer PE cars. The whistle steam is a very cool feature, IMO, and works really well with one caveat; to get a good effect, you need to have higher track voltage, which means warp speed in conventional unless it's in idle. The railsounds tender is great as well, really great quilling whistle and the diescast tender shell definitely helps with the sound. I ran mine in conventional and with a powermaster for a while, but then I swapped shells with a TMCC berk Jr chassis and added a Pere Marquette 1225 railsounds chip to the tender. Although, I don't have the skills that Gunrunnerjohn has so I never figured out how to get the whistle steam effect to work with TMCC. I still have the original loco and tender chassis in a box somewhere. I'm very happy with my custom TMCC PE, but I do miss the whistle steam sometimes. IMO, if you plan on running a conventional PE and you find this loco for a good price, you definitely won't be disappointed.
-Scott
I have one NIB.
I always meant to convert the one I had to TMCC, but then I figured if I did that I'd want fan driven smoke and I'd lose the whistle steam anyway, so I just sold it. I already have a TMCC equipped one with fan driven smoke, so that will have to do. Besides, I have lots of Legacy with whistle steam, and a few with more than that.
