My ES44AC Intermountain


tankist

tankist

Active Member
the first one arrived yesterday. Rumor has it that the second one, which I ordered via Josh pre-order, is on its way as well.

As far as the detail it is amazing. i never held brass locos, but i'm not sure if at this level there is much room for improvement. as far as running however it is early to tell. this loco so far proved to be excellent detector for minor track-work flaws - apparently i have one area it really doesn't like. while any other larger 6 axle locos doing fine, this one derails 10 out of 10 times even at crawling speed. but then this happens running in only one direction, the other is 100% fine even at the very max speed. i think raising outside rail a bit should remedy the issue. with that it is running fine on 18R (obviously looking ridiculous doing so)

question to the detail watchers, is the sound correct for this unit?

and some pictures (rest are here)

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Detail-wise, it's perfect. Sound-wise, the selectable horns that come with it don't include any good ones. (BNSF tends to have loud screaming horns. I'm unsure of the model, but they sound awesome!)

See Here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KAPlMrBYVY
(Skip to about a minute in if you want to skip the commuter train with its weak sounding K3LA)

Or this one for just BNSF horn-y goodness :D
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6KOlWq1fzg

Is yours quiet or loud? I wonder if they've fixed the speaker seal yet.
 
it is certainly loud enough to my taste although i will later try to quiet down the prime mover sounds so the horn stands out more. i though t the seal was a problem with athearns, i'm not aware of similar issue with intermountains.

perhaps i'm being unreasonably picky , but comparing with QSI board in my atlas gold dash8 i must say i'm less impressed. speaker placement under radiator "wings" is apparent and sounds strange although its not a big deal. sound quality itself subjectively seems just a ted behind QSI as well and i've yet to try all the options.

it seems as if simplified OEM board,,similar to one in spectrum units, is used here.
 
Sorry, I'm not quite awake right now. There should be a way to increase the volume of the horn though. (by increasing the individual sound volume and adjusting the EQ for the speaker)

Adjusting the EQ is fun. I can make my locomotive sound like a beater or make it sound brand new out of the factory.
 
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