MTH recently shipped the four E94's -- two German and two Austrian [ = 1020 class ], and my green Austrian one arrived today. Here are my initial impressions:
1. The new style packaging
a) The box opens vertically; the plastic seals on both ends say "Do Not Cut -- Reusable....", but it carefully peeling one off it took some of the box lettering with it. So my advice would be to peel off from the bottom, and leave the seal attached to the upper printed box.
b) With the top of the box removed there is the paperwork, and a two part foam container that also lifts off vertically after removal of the two Velcro-type straps. The loco is bolted to the board on the bottom, so you lift out the board. The board is much longer than the loco -- perhaps the 2-10-0 will use the same one, but it seems like a waste of shipping cube.
c) There are two brass strips under 2 axles on one truck, with short wire leads for the power in place feature.
2. First impression:
a) Very good; it has the "right look". The road number is 1020.23 -- no computer suffix.
b) Oh no, the roof cover [ over all the slide switches is missing ] ! Turns out it is packaged in with the 3 rail rollers etc.
c) The plastic radio antenna is loose. Easily fixed -- and if you are going to remove it as I am, even better.
3. Powering up
a) I read the instruction book. I had thought that the "anti-jackrabbit" feature was going to go away, but this reads the same as the Krok.
b) I connect up my MTH Remote Commander to the two leads, power up, and the unit fires up with a lot of noise after pressing start up -- so the unit shipped with the magic Factory Reset Address -- good.
I select a direction and the unit runs for about four seconds and goes dead. Oh great. To make a very long troubleshooting story shorter, there is intermittent contact between the wheels and the brass strips on the display board. The locomotive is held slightly off the board by the mounting bolts with spacers, and I think there is a fine line between making contact and making too much contact. With the unit on my usual roller test stand units or on the track, there is no problem.
c) Operation in DCS or DC is the same as the Krok, I think; I'm going to have to explore this more, but it seems like there has been no improvement in voltage threshold for movement, or in the startup sequence after power up, plus there's the usual "pantograph dance". Phooey, very disappointing. More investigation required -- I thought there was going to be a software change ??
4. The walkaround:
a) The plus's
- the characteristic small snowplow of the Austrian units is present
- the pantographs seem to have [ what I think are ] the proper Austrian style diagonal bracing
b) The minus's
- the number boards: just lithography, no depth at all. The prototype MTH copied from clearly has these separate number and initial plates -- no excuse.
- There are three Indusi [ = ATS ] pickups. I thought there should be just two, on both sides at the #1 end; there is a third one on the right front when the #2 end leads.
- The truck frames are really disappointing for their lack of depth; the equalization levers, etc, are just cast into the frame, and very shallow at that. Very tinplateish.
- No electric train heat cables at either end. Fixable, but an obvious miss.*
- I think there is a short buss bar missing on the rooftop electricals -- otherwise catenary [ or cantenary as MTH spells it in the instructions ] voltage would never get over to the circuit breaker.
[ Not a big issue and readily fixable -- but if you've ever spent time on electric loco roofs you notice those things....]
Executive summary:
I have the öBB orange one on order at a LHS. But I was thinking about getting the ocean-blue and just maybe the green DB ones, based on internet photos. Now, I don't think so, primarily due to the shortcomings in DC analogue operation, but also some of the details on those models.
BUT: I have a couple of HÜbner DB E94's, and for a diecast 30+ year old model they are superior in many respects to the MTH ones -- but not for DCC as is. If you "need" an E94, I'd buy the MTH one. Your opinions and needs will vary.
Best regards, SZ
*Edited to add: Maybe not such an obvious miss: The photo of .23 that Busch uses on their website does not show the cable, so since I berated them for the poor number boards I can't do the same for the cable. I notice from photos that the orange model is missing them also, so perhaps there is a reason why they are not present. This may be another manifestation of MTH modelling a preserved rather than an in service unit -- perhaps there are safety concerns, or a new EU regulation. Apologies to MTH.
