I will pretty much concur with what Rusty and Bob have said. It's sort
of funny that when both engines were imported several were sold in our
club--I didn't buy either as my layout wasn't that far along and I
suspected that it would look too large on my layout even though I was
the only UP modeler in our club!
Our local loco guru Jack Troxell, went to work on four of them
correcting all the ills the BB had. He replaced the Pittman with a
larger one, added a flywheel, replaced the gearboxes, universals/shafts
and made up a centering mechanism to keep the boiler centered. And as
Rusty suggests there are some problems with wheels--both the drivers and
with the tender. Someplace in a past S Gaugian is a total list of the
changes he made.
I finally obtained one of those engines that had been custom painted and
PFM sound installed. I removed the PFM and converted it to DCC with
dual decoders (I have not been able to get a Tsunami to duplicate the
steamboat whistle that the earlier Soundtraxx had). I finally decided
that it was too big for my layout and it was pretty much a mainline
engine on my layout. So I sold it.
Later I obtained a Challenger that had been painted fairly well. As Bob
Hogan mentions the running qualities were improved somewhat. In my
case, it has more shorts than the folks at Nike have produced! It's
photograph is on the intro page of the Houston S Gaugers Website. It
has become one of those 'someday' projects. The engine itself is only
slightly larger than my FEF, so it will be okay size-wise when the day
comes.
Bob Werre
PhotoTraxx
On 11/5/12 7:14 AM, adguytrains wrote:
John...
The Challenger actually runs quite well (since sold to focus on SP).
Mine (and everyone that I have ever seen run) had a pretty good gear
growl that I could not ever eliminate. It ran well on my layout with
48" minimum radius and code 100 rail and on the Bristol Club modular
layout with code 126 rail and some really "rough" track joints,
depending on the show set up. It logged a lot of running time on that
layout and is a very nice model. Wayne may still have some decals, as
they are excellent.
The Big Boy is another matter completely. I've only seen one really
operate well and that was a complete rebuild. Rusty's comments on both
locos are right on, as always. Even Arden doesn't seem to operate his
too often on his massive Union Pacific layout.
Bob Hogan
--- In [email protected] <mailto:S-Scale%40yahoogroups.com>,
"John Degnan" <Scaler164@...> wrote:
>
> Looking for photos of and info about Sunset Models' (brass) Big Boy
and Challenger. How well were these models done and how well did they
operate?
>
> I might also be interested in any that might be for sale.
>
>
> John Degnan
> Scaler164@...
> Scaler187@...
>
