Stopped in at the MTH open house at Charles Ro last week and met Marty and Mike (sorry about the Dolphins) and had a great time. While I was there I picked up a Western Maryland Legacy F7-AA powered/dummy (sorry again, Mike), but had to bring it back an hour later due to what I discovered was an inherent traction tire issue with these engines. We cut off the old Lionel ones and put on a set of thinner MTH ones (thanks, Mike) and the train rolled like it's supposed to.
I'm a newbie after about a 40 year absence from model railroading and had picked up a Rio Grande GP-9 for my first Legacy locomotive and it runs and sounds great. Here's the issue with the F7 - the smoke, lights, horn, air, crew talk and bell all work fine on the new F7, but the overall volume is only about 75% as compared to the Geep (volume knob is all the way up). More importantly, the engine sounds, engine laboring, RPM and brake sounds on the F7 are barely audible. In addition, when the train brake slider is only 1/3 down, the engine will barely move and when I rotate the multi-controller knob to brake, there is very little braking sound and the train comes to a complete stop.
I've tried a reset, adjusting the momentum and assigning a new ID, but those didn't help and Odyssey is definitely on. I should add that when I first got it home and it would barely move because of the traction tires, the cab light came on blinking, but hasn't since switching traction tires.
I'm a little disappointed in the performance of the F7, especially as compared to the GP-9. I was very happy to find a NIB F7-AA in stock as there doesn't appear to be a lot out there and would hate to have to send it back to Lionel.
Is this just how the F7's run or is there a problem ?
Thanks.
