I have two of these. Both with DCC. I just added a blunami decoder to them & have fell back in love with them all over! They ran well before. Now however with a better decoder & a beautiful sound system in them they are my favorites to run!! My 1225 Pere Marquette pulls my polar express heavyweight pullmans (10 total with lights & interior) up my 2% grades with no issue.
My 1218 PM pulls 20 coal cars with ease as well.
I want to get a C&O berk but I am in the middle of a layout makeover, so that will have to wait.

So I took it all apart. Cleaned all the old grease off the gears. I looked & looked ! I did not see any cracks in the gears. After I put it back together. Added new grease( very little at that) it seemed to help the lurching a bit. Still they're at very low speed , but not as bad as before.
The weight added was 1/2 a oz it helped a lot with the wheel slip. So at this point I am happy with it for now. Might look for a better can motor for it down the road.

Quote from: Terry Toenges on February 10, 2023, 01:56:03 PMHave you checked the track to see if there are any slick spots where maybe something leaked on it like gear oil? I often use a rubber pink eraser (like you use in school) to go over my track to clean up any residue on it.

Track is clean. The rest of my locos don't have an issue with it. I have always had the wheel slip issue with this little loco since I got it many years ago.
I will try the weight adding to see if that will help.

I don't think I can get traction tires for this model, however I have thought of adding a bit of weight. I plan on looking into this over the weekend. I will let you know of my results.

I will double check the gears to see. It could be a stress crack in it I did not notice. Thank you.

Hi everyone! I have an older hogwarts express 4-6-0 it runs amazing. I updated to DCC with a digitrax sound decoder. Again it is running great. I would love to help it with it lurching. At low speed it will lunge a bit almost like a flat spot in the gears. I have looked & cleaned everything, but can not see anything wrong. I also would like to know what I can do to stop the wheels from slipping on my 2% incline.
It is only pulling 5 cars up the grade.
Thanks for any help.