Royal Gorge Gorgeous but unfriendly in several ways

[Joe Baldwin]

I received the Bachmann Royal Gorge F7 AB with two passgenger cars for Christmas 2012.  Beautiful packaging, as I said, a gorgeous   looking unit.  Since the set was not DCC ready, I wanted to return it to Hobby Town but their return policy was to trade for something else.  Should have gotten a teddy bear.

1 - The observation car not only rolls roughly but will not stay coupled with anything else in the set.  Coupler height is the issue, fixing it will be another issue though.  
2- Converted the A unit to Tsunami Sound and all is good there.  
3 - Installed a Soundtraxx MC1Z102SQ  mobile decoder in the B unit and the train runs about 1-2 seconds stalls and starts again.  Swapped decoder to a P2K and Athearn units and works fine.  Installed NCE decoder and it works fine in the B unit BUT will not speed match well with the Tsunami.  

I've a train room full of Bachmann locomotives and must tell you the quality of this set is well below what I have been accustom to from Bachman.