Just bought one of these (metronet pathfinder), inserted a dcc decoder and put on the layout:
Great looking model. Smooth running with moderate noise level. Bi-directional lighting is really nice. Weathering needed on this model in my opinion.
Areas of potential improvement:
The model is too light. This means traction is not great and an imperfect layout can cause the loco to stall relatively easily. Electrical pick up will also eventually suffer from lack of weight.
Electrical pickup: only 4 axles out of the 6 are used for electrical pickup: very silly as adding the other two would be very easy and provide improvement for power pickup. The lack of weight will not help. I wish they would add lead to the boggies.
Wheels: slightly shallow. My loco cannot go through one of the peco points on my layout as the point is right at the end of a curve and the front wheel of the rear truck is 'climbing' on the needle of the point as it enters (the needles are cut downward at the tip so that the very end of the tip is about 1.5mm or so below the rail level). Having a slightly deeper wheel flange (like on my Kato locos for eg) would prevent that happening.
Great model overall but please add weight and put the extra pickups as this would then produce a truly great and reliable runner. Deeper wheel flanges would provide extra reliability on the track particularly as these long 6 wheel boggies are always struggling to cope with tight curves and imperfect layouts.
Great looking model. Smooth running with moderate noise level. Bi-directional lighting is really nice. Weathering needed on this model in my opinion.
Areas of potential improvement:
The model is too light. This means traction is not great and an imperfect layout can cause the loco to stall relatively easily. Electrical pick up will also eventually suffer from lack of weight.
Electrical pickup: only 4 axles out of the 6 are used for electrical pickup: very silly as adding the other two would be very easy and provide improvement for power pickup. The lack of weight will not help. I wish they would add lead to the boggies.
Wheels: slightly shallow. My loco cannot go through one of the peco points on my layout as the point is right at the end of a curve and the front wheel of the rear truck is 'climbing' on the needle of the point as it enters (the needles are cut downward at the tip so that the very end of the tip is about 1.5mm or so below the rail level). Having a slightly deeper wheel flange (like on my Kato locos for eg) would prevent that happening.
Great model overall but please add weight and put the extra pickups as this would then produce a truly great and reliable runner. Deeper wheel flanges would provide extra reliability on the track particularly as these long 6 wheel boggies are always struggling to cope with tight curves and imperfect layouts.