Southern road names!

[Trainman203]

Mr.  Bach Man!  Way up in Philadelphia PA!  Take note!  

The SOUTHERN RAILWAY sound value 2-8-0 has sold out at several discount houses!  BEFORE the perennial favorite train set road names NEW YORK CENTRAL,  PENNSYLVANIA and SANTA FE!!!!

Make more SR 2-8-0s!  Now!  (And while you're at it, space the tender numerals more like the prototype.)

[Trainman203]

It has reappeared at one house!  So I'm not waiting for the sale anymore.

[Trainman203]

I just ordered the 630 and the 4501.  Both those engines are at the TVRRM if I recall correctly, they must sell very well there.

They both have goodly deviations from the prototype but overall they look very good.  I'm thrilled to have SR engines in freight black instead of an apparently hard to match green.

Rode in the 630 cab up there 36 years ago.  Probably can't now.

[Trainman203]

The 630 is different from the previously issued freight black 721 in (incorrect) tender numeral spacing, black cylinder heads instead of nickel silver, and a brass number plate under the headlight instead of a red one like on the 721.  The red tender deck is supposed to look like the oxide primer that SR rustproofed the decks with, but it looks more like a lipstick color, needs toning down with some sootlike black weathering powder.  Also, the headlight is nice and bright like it should have been all along, and dims in reverse instead of going off completely.

Something is different about the sound value package and I'm not sure what it is, but the chuff seems more difficult to accurately set to 4 per driver revolution .  Usually a cv 116 value of 150 is good but this one seems to want a higher value, around 185 or so.  Even then, the chuff is too spaced apart at starting and bunches up pretty quick. 

The default whistle is the B4g 3 chime, a beautifully tuned sound I can't get enough of.  The other two whistles are lacking.  The Crosby 3 chime is very high pitched and has an annoying tail at the end.  The other one is called a D&RGW whistle but it is just like the (to me) boring B&O 3 chime on each and every Bachmann steam decoder.  Someone at Bachmann really likes that sound but no one west of the Mississippi thinks it sounds like a train.

Sound Value is missing a lot of sounds and features , but the one I miss the most is cv 113, which keeps the engine silent at layout power up until you move it, and turns off the sound after an interval that you set.  It comes on when you power up the layout and you have to silence  it with F8.   Nevertheless, since this engine will only occasionally be used, I'll wait a while to replace the decoder. 

All in all, a nice engine.