MikeOwnby
Active Member
I was all set to buy one of the new Daylight GS-4's in N scale, but then found out that Kato really made a pretty (in my opinion) bone-headed mistake in the way they designed the thing. Turns out, you can only put one of their motor-function-only decoders in it, and there's no way to control the lights whatsoever. If there's power to the track, the light is on. In addition, the only "drop in" decoder is their own, which doesn't have the functions and features I'm used to from Digitrax. They made a beautiful model that I'd normally love to have, then engineered it so that it would be a DCC dud. I just. Do. Not. Understand.
Surely the GS-4 isn't so different from the FEF that they couldn't have engineered it the same way, with a decoder in the locomotive. Or even just done what everyone else does and put a few wires between loco and tender so that the decoder actually does what a decoder should do. I wonder (cynic that I am) if it wasn't designed this way specifically to force people to buy those Kato decoders. Maybe they had a surplus laying around?
Sure woulda been nice to hook my Daylight passenger cars to some steam once in a while, but I guess the diesels will have to do until somebody designs a GS-4 that's fully functional.
Surely the GS-4 isn't so different from the FEF that they couldn't have engineered it the same way, with a decoder in the locomotive. Or even just done what everyone else does and put a few wires between loco and tender so that the decoder actually does what a decoder should do. I wonder (cynic that I am) if it wasn't designed this way specifically to force people to buy those Kato decoders. Maybe they had a surplus laying around?
Sure woulda been nice to hook my Daylight passenger cars to some steam once in a while, but I guess the diesels will have to do until somebody designs a GS-4 that's fully functional.