thanks haha glad people are enjoying it! Ya lighting was a struggle for this video, many shots were too dark due to the bad setup

Thanks Lip!

thanks!

nice! enjoy!

Unfortunately, your only luck will be if Scaletrains somehow still has the tooling for MTH's Empire state express, and they make it within the next decade. Besides, that all you got is rivarossi, an old MTH, or brass. LMB ESE brass models actually arent that expensive at around $300. If you have the extra money to spare though, Westside Mizuno's ESE looks fantastic!

@@trainman440 I'm hoping that Rivarossi does a modern run. It's honestly more likely than ST doing one. I could buy brass, but adding DCC/Sound is always a bit of a headache with brass

indeed!

Hi, I think that's just a pre production sample issue which theyve fixed ever since. I havent heard of any issues with center drivers from any other models, including my own engine.

@@trainman440 My father's Dreyfuss has the same issue, and his is an actual production sample. Maybe it's a gremlin that plagues some of the engines but not others.

@@DavidSanchez-ks4ub interesting, is it a layout issue then? Or maybe I was just unaware of such an issue...in anycase thats good to know, thanks for sharing!

@@trainman440 I run my engines at the local club, which has some extremely well laid track courtesy of 2 of the members there, so unfortunately that's not the issue. The drivers lift off the rails depending on the position of the running gear. When the crankpin is at the 6 o'clock position on that driver, it's on the rails. If it's at the 12 o'clock position, that driver is above the rails. It's hard to notice because it only does that while it's moving and even with that issue it runs too smoothly for most of the other club members to notice. I've tried washers which made the problem worse then I used NWSL springs which couldn't even fit, so it looks like my last option is to replace the springs with a shim. The idea for that is to keep the drivers firmly planted on the rails to make use of those traction tires. Hopefully it works.

@@DavidSanchez-ks4ub have you considered the wheels possibly being out of quarter? otherwise there really is no forces that would push the wheel to go upwards...besides being out of quarter. alternatively have you tried swapping the springs from the front or rear driver with the springs on the center driver? Again, assuming the springs are of equal strength and that the wheels are in quarter I really see nothing else that would cause the center wheel to lift.

I agree MTH drives are totally underrated. That being said I found BLI's drives to be fine too, though recently in their transition to paragon 3, they started cheaping out on their motors...thats why I stick to paragon 2 or earlier whenever possible since they still have the quality motors. If you look on their website youll see that every paragon 3 engine no long has "5 pole" mentioned in their features. Whereas every paragon 2 (and paragon 4) engine does.

I have many videos of my layout, but because I've been away from home all year, I dont have any clips of this particular engine on my layout. Cheers!

JT Mega Steam, though really any brand of smoke fluid should work.

@@trainman440 that's odd because my mth h10 has trouble producing a visible cloud of smoke

@@TrainznProgress you put in 5 drops of fluid, then blew air down into the stack right? Then make sure you hear the buzzing sounds of the smoke unit motor. If nothing still happens your smoke unit is probably bad...they tend to break easily.

@@trainman440 the fan runs and everything, I've had it apart and the sponge was burnt so I ordered a whick. And it dosent produce the white smoke. It just blows this watery vapor out

@@TrainznProgress yea idk I dont use smoke units, theyre messy and dont look realistic to me...so Im really not the right person to ask about this, sorry.