{"id":471,"date":"2014-11-02T21:13:08","date_gmt":"2014-11-03T03:13:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lacentralrr.com\/Blog\/?p=471"},"modified":"2015-03-15T15:32:04","modified_gmt":"2015-03-15T20:32:04","slug":"spencer-gets-a-new-heisler","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lacentralrr.com\/Blog\/2014\/11\/02\/spencer-gets-a-new-heisler\/","title":{"rendered":"Spencer Gets a New Heisler"},"content":{"rendered":"

Recently over on the Model Railroad Hobbyist<\/em> forum someone had posted the topic “Locos you want to see produced?”<\/em>\u00a0 I had responded that I’d like to see a nice HO scale Heisler, and had mentioned that I wasn’t interested in the Rivarossi Heisler.\u00a0 One respondent, Professor Klyzlr, questioned why I wasn’t interested in the Rivarossi model.\u00a0 Since my opinion of the locomotive had been formed many years ago when the model was initially introduced, I decided to investigate the present state of the model before replying.<\/p>\n

What I discovered was much more impressive.\u00a0 In fact, during my investigation I found an especially good sale on one of the new sound equipped models and wound up purchasing the thing.<\/p>\n

\"Rivarossi<\/a>This past weekend I put the engine through its paces.\u00a0 Here is a brief summary of my initial reaction to the locomotive.<\/p>\n

The good:<\/strong>\u00a0 the model is much better looking than the original.\u00a0 It has RP-25 flanges rather than the “pizza-cutter” flanges on the early model I had seen.\u00a0 The couplers are now body mounted, rather than Talgo style (mounted to the trucks).\u00a0 Most of the details are individually applied rather than cast on.\u00a0 The paint looks good (though I’ll be re-painting it and adding decals for the Spencer logging operation on my pike).\u00a0 It has a more refined, delicate look to it, and I’m pleased with its appearance.<\/p>\n

The model now has a flat can motor (the original had the big 3-pole motor as I recall).\u00a0 And it has the LokSound V4.0 sound decoder in it.\u00a0 Running qualities are excellent.\u00a0 It will really creep along at a pretty smooth pace.<\/p>\n

The not-so-good:<\/strong>\u00a0 The gear noise is disappointing.\u00a0 The decoder’s sound levels have to be higher than I’d like so that they can be heard over the running noise.\u00a0 I noticed while it was running very slowly that it has a slight bind in the running gear at the cylinders.\u00a0 I will have to disassemble it when I get time and go over it carefully, cleaning up flash and burrs, and making sure everything is properly aligned and running as true as possible.\u00a0 I might even put some Pearl Drops on the mechanism and run it a bit to see if that helps wear in the parts.\u00a0 After cleaning, I will then do a good lube and see if that all helps smooth it out and quiet it down somewhat.<\/p>\n

The decoder itself is jammed packed with features, and the overall sound of the engine is decent.\u00a0 However, it is far and away the most complicated decoder I’ve ever seen to program, even using DecoderPro.\u00a0 I’ve already invested quite a few hours fine-tuning the sounds and mapping the almost ridiculous number of sound effects to the various function buttons.<\/p>\n

It is pulling nine cars up a 2-1\/2% grade, and that without installing the (included) wheelset with traction tires.\u00a0 That’s good because I’m looking for it to haul six (empty) skeleton log cars and a caboose up a 4% grade.<\/p>\n

My overall initial impression: satisfactory . . . a nice model, and I’m happy to add it to my fleet.<\/p>\n

-Jack<\/em><\/p>\n

P.S.\u00a0 Love<\/em> the whistle on that thing!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Recently over on the Model Railroad Hobbyist forum someone had posted the topic “Locos you want to see produced?”\u00a0 I had responded that I’d like to see a nice HO scale Heisler, and had mentioned that I wasn’t interested in … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-471","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-locos-rolling-stock"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lacentralrr.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/471","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lacentralrr.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lacentralrr.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lacentralrr.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lacentralrr.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=471"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.lacentralrr.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/471\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":481,"href":"https:\/\/www.lacentralrr.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/471\/revisions\/481"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lacentralrr.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lacentralrr.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lacentralrr.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}