OK, so I've posted some of my issues and you're probably sick of reading them - SO.... time for some good news:
1) I mentioned how my forum friend's PS2 version of the Blue Comet easily handled the lower track area of my layout which used 12 switches - 8 of which were 27" ones. But my PS3 version had trouble on some of the switches and therefore I couldn't run my Blue Comet on the trackage which I designed for it to run on. UPDATE! I am in the process of tearing down my layout and have only the lower level still in tack. So for the heck of it, knowing that the Blue Comet handled some but not all of the switches, I ran just the engine and tender and guess what?? It handled every single switch in both directions thru the divergent routes. WOW!!!! Great news. So I then hooked up the 4 cars and tried again and, voila, all was well !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I ran it and ran it and ran it for over an hour in all kinds of directions and it ran perfectly. I don't know why it had issues when I first tried it - did it need to break in or something???? I now am NOT going to sell all of 27" stuff, even though I plan on limiting (or eliminating if possible) its usage next year.
2) I mentioned that I used MTH's lighted lockons and that the cars with pick up shoes didn't like how the 'tab' stuck up - the shoe hit it and caused problems. Turns out that the trackage that I was trying to run on had only 2 of the lighted lockons, one was fine and the other not fine. Well, on the lower level I have 9 of the lockons and ALL of them are FINE with the shoes. Turns out that only that one lockon was an issue. Of course I should mention that I had to beat down the tabs on all of the lockons in prior years because the tabs interfered with the pickup rollers of my Railking stuff.
So I'm way more optimistic today about 2014's options than I was just 3 days ago.
Some GOOD news from me for a change!
See you in 10 months 
- walt
