Hello, Well it is getting difficult to stay with just Atlas, Kato and whatever is left of the dwindling Intermountain locomotives. In many cases they are leaving out locomotives of interest. So it is time, perhaps, to try a new locomotive source now that Intermountain can no longer be trusted. So what do you think about the sound quality and the running quality of the BLI locomotives? What is their customer support like? Thanks!
@DCESharkman Sound great! However, regardless of disease'el or steam locomotive, regardless of how clean the track and well tuned the powered-frog equipped turnout, they will stutter, they will stop, in short, they run quite horribly. This moose will never buy another BLI product.
I have had no luck with them until I received the BLI RSD15"s with the Paragon 4 decoders..One month of running with no problems { Knock on Wood}
I agree, that is my experience at the club I belong to. I bought a new BLI NW2, the gears had bad grinding noise, difficult to program. I sent it in on warranty. They said they replaced the trucks, motor, and decoder. No grinding noise, but still difficult to program and didn't run very well. I traded it in for a used Kato F7 - much better loco. My best runners are Kato and Fox Valley. Sad we have so few choices for older types of diesel locos.
I have several of the BLI NW2/SW7 models with the paragon 3 decoder. Disasters, every one of them. They just run so poorly. I have no experience with the paragon 4 decoders personally, but I have read a lot of posts at different places where people are reporting the same old/same old. I have also consistently read of people tearing out the BLI decoder and replacing it with something different, often ESU. And those reports pretty typically indicate that doing so solved the running issue. So if true, the problem seems to be the decoder, not the locomotive design. But paying BLI price, then having to buy another decoder, and tear out & install - for me it is not worth the trouble. Not to mention I am probably incapable of that kind of surgery.
Many Trains hit it right on the nail I bought 2 NW-2's from BLI and they were Paragon 3. Big Disasters both went to the scrap pile till i got new decoders. Now they are good runners. I didn't put sound decoders so that is a plus to me. i didn't want the sound anyway, so i had that turned off. Mine are super quiet. My Atlas are a bit louder than the BLI's I have heard that the Paragon4 are really good. good luck if you can't replace the decoder. finding someone to do that for you. there are folks out there that do it all the time.
Same with me, nw2, paragon4. I bought it undecorated and did all the painting but runs terrible. Jackrabbiting and grinding. Sent it in with a full description of the problem, they said they changed the motor and decoder. The locos runs exactly as I sent it to them. Difficult to program on decoder pro, change one CV and often the address and something else gets reset, pain in the Choo choo. The speaker installation is terrible, sounds very tinny and staticky compared to my LokSounds. I do have a Mikado that runs well, but don't like the programming, someday will change it to LokSound.
On the other hand... The paragon4 decoders have some amount of keep alive. When I got it back from warranty it ran absolutely like crap, stalling every few centimeters, even on freshly cleaned track. Turns out Support had disabled the keep alive in the CVs. When I turned it back on, no more stalling, but did nothing for the jackrabbiting and grinding (naturally).
I have one, an ET44AC, Paragon 3. It has only a couple of hours of run time on it, and has been trouble-free. I thought it was giving me trouble on my last run with it last week, but every loco had the same trouble until I cleaned my track.
Had bought a Paragon 3 Pennsy T1 steam loco when it came out. The reviews and experiences with the PRR M1 with Paragon 2 were all positive, so I took a chance and picked up the T1. It ran great for several hours. Then it didn't. Long story short, it has a Lok 5 unit and a new motor. Runs great now, but at a large expense. I took a chance after watching MRLDaves new Paragon 4 equipped Milw Pacific pulling trains at the Helena show last year, and bought a Pacific in NP paint. It has been a very reliable performer, thus far. It has a lot of hours run time on it and hasn't given me any issues.
@badlandnp: the pacific seems to be a nice runner for me as well with no adjustment out of the box. All of my BLI diesels except for my older Alco PA Southern Pacific set (paragon 2) have required a bit of adjustment to get the jackrabbiting out and still not as clean as ESU/Zimo/Tsunami factory equipped locos. Likely I'll steer away from this brand until I start seeing a trend of reviews to the contrary. I suppose if they had a model I had to have I'd buy with the understanding I might have to replace the decoder to get the performance I want. They do make a nice looking model though with more detail than kato and atlas (subjective) but not quite up there with rapido or scaletrains.
I have had four of the BLI offerings: Two USRA light 2-8-2s and two Baldwin Centipedes. The light mikados are very good. they run nicely on DC (I do not use DCC) at a good slow speed. They almost never stall. The Centipedes were prone to stalling. I sold my two, I got so tired of their stalling.
I can’t say for N Scale personally, but in HO my BLI locomotives were some of my favorites. I had a Class J (611) an undecorated N&W Y6B, and a NS SD40-2 all with sound and all were awesome runners and sounded great. I have simply not found an N scale locomotive from them that I need to add to my collection yet, but I will try them at least once.
My only issues have been 1 E6 fried a decoder, which was replaced under warranty, and a couple of locos have forgotten their programming, but were fine after reprogramming.......I've been told by BLI that locking the decoders will fix that, but I haven't tried since I'm still working on the programming. I have an NW2, 2 E6s, 2 E7s, a Mikado, 2 Pacifics , and 2 P5as. They all run beautifully, and the ones with sound sound great (for n scale). I run them a lot at NTRAK events (home layout isn't running yet) and if anything will stop a DCC loco it's NTRAK............loose rail joiners , excessive rail gaps between modules, Track work laid by multiple builders ON the modules.........stuff that will stop a DC loco, and my BLIs have handled it all just fine. I have a video online somewhere of one of the P5s pulling 58 cars by itself (pretty good for a loco with only 2 driving axels) and I've had 65 cars behind my Mikado.......I haven't really tested any of the others for pulling power since they are all passenger engines (or switchers in the case of the NW2) and they were never really asked to pull more than 20 cars, but BLI locos pull very well. Having said all that, I know a lot of people that have had issues with multiple different models of BLI locos. Most BLI locos have gotten an A rating from Spookshow ( the go-to guy for evaluating N scale locos). One last "issue" I have had, is if you run the locos for several hours non-stop ( Back to the NTRAK thing) with the sound turned way up, the decoders will heat up and they will start running a but glitchy........turning the sound down to under half volume, buys you another couple of hours.......or turn it off and they'll run forever. But that could be said for most sound equipped locos.........I was originally told of this issue by a Kato rep, applied to their FEF steamer. There was also a memo from BLI that said to limit DC power to a max of 16 volts........some power packs out there exceed that and may be part of the issue with a lot of people. At this point, I'll continue to buy BLIs......They've given me less headaches than my Kato or Atlas locos.
This is what bugs me about Broadway Limited diesel locomotives - they have this ugly gap between the bottom of the body and the top of the trucks. It looks ridiculous from a certain angle - it's as if the entire loco body is resting on toothpicks over the trucks. In N scale all manufacturers have "the gap" but most of them deal with it in better ways - specifically Kato, ScaleTrains and Fox Valley (except for their SD70ACe). But with BLI, you can expect that ugly gap there every single time.
Well I have decided that I need no more locomotives, passenger cars or freight cars. I am done accumulating!
It actually can happen. I am almost at that point. The only thing that I am still buying is baggage cars. When you run the mail trains that I run, you just can not have too many baggage cars. If certain things did appear, such as: A B&O Big Six A road specific B&O Pacific (I have USRA) A B&O Q-4 2-8-2 A B&O E-27 2-8-0 A Baldwin road switcher A FM or Lima yard goat (The TRIX FM was fine for its time, but it is not up to the standards of to-day) A P&LE A2a 2-8-4 A wood RPO or baggage-mail I would buy them. I also would consider a Mexican twelve wheeler or any Prairie type. The B-mann "Prairie" really is not a "Prairie", it is a USRA 0-6-0 with idler trucks added. If BLI did a passenger Shark, I would consider it. As it is, I do have three Bs and one A shell from Father Nature. It looks like the best bet might be to try to get a DL-109 power chassis under the B and put a dummy chassis under the A. It looks like the C-C power chassis is going to need some serious modification to get under the B. The modification to the dummy to go under the A is minor. I finally found a C-C DL-109 power chassis for a reasonable price. I am wondering if I should bite the proverbial bullet and pay the ridiculous FeePay prices for an LL Dl-109 and see if that might be a better fit.
My PA's and E units rock. Breakages have occurred with clumsy handling (not mine) , but spares support was exemplary.
