Lionel's New Doodlebug is a Home Run!

Thanks for this excellent review ( All your reviews are excellent IMHO! )  Eric!!   I had no idea Lionel's Doodlebug even existed, especial in Maryland and Pennsylvania until I saw your review.  I just ordered a MA&PA doodlebug from one of the OGR Forum sponsors and am looking forward to having it run on my railroad.  

A fine review, Eric! I received a Doodlebug--Christmas livery--just a few days ago and still have not taken it out of its box. Looking forward to operating this distinctive piece of motive power with the large variety of Christmas-theme motive power and rolling stock (Lionel and MTH) that I have accumulated over the years.

Allan & Patrick, the Doodlebug is a unique and fun piece to run on the layout. As I mentioned in another post, I absolutely enjoy the simplicity of it.

Gene

Nice unit!  Can that "cab/crew talk" be avoided?  I just don't like it and wouldn't want to hear it more than once.   It seems like something more appropriate for a kiddy-level Lionel product.  Just my personal opinion.

Fun overview; thanks Eric!  RadioRon, you definitely do not have to listen to the crew talk if you don't want to. Like Allan, I may add the Christmas (or perhaps Halloween) version to my own collection.

Agreed on all points.  I bought the Christmas version and cannot believe how delightful the sounds are.  From jingle bells when you hit the bell button to an ongoing dialog from the "engineer". But there was one MAJOR omission.  How can you go to a Christmas celebration with no children? So, I made sure that Santa was carrying a load of little kids to the celebration.

Oh my, so much better than my MTH version.

@PeterA posted:

So, I made sure that Santa was carrying a load of little kids to the celebration.

What did you use, and how did you accomplish this, Peter? Looks very good, and I'm sure a good number of Doodlebug owners might like to see a step-by-step description of the way you did it so they can add kids/passengers to their Doodlebugs.

@PeterA posted:

, I made sure that Santa was carrying a load of little kids to the celebration.

Great touch Peter.

Nice video, Eric, and nice figure addition, Peter.

Can this item be made into a lashup with it being Lionchief 2.0 such that one Doodlebug is oriented forward another backward?

I would be interested in what other lines real or fantasy Lionel decides to do.

@trumpettrain posted:

Thanks for this excellent review ( All your reviews are excellent IMHO! )  Eric!!   I had no idea Lionel's Doodlebug even existed, especial in Maryland and Pennsylvania until I saw your review.  I just ordered a MA&PA doodlebug from one of the OGR Forum sponsors and am looking forward to having it run on my railroad.  

I also enjoyed Eric's review I pre-ordered the MA & PA as soon as the catalog came out. I've been running the original MTH MA & PA doodlebug coaches with this model.

@RadioRon posted:

Nice unit!  Can that "cab/crew talk" be avoided?  I just don't like it and wouldn't want to hear it more than once.   It seems like something more appropriate for a kiddy-level Lionel product.  Just my personal opinion.

In the Lionchief app you can customize the sounds. Sound levels for the  different aspects, types of bell, etc. More control than I've ever seen. Kind of like on your cell phone where you can have different sound levels for messages, calls, music, etc.