Jim Harrington posted:I'm not debating whether they should be on either the locomotive or the tender. All my TMCC steam locomotives have four - two rollers on the loco AND two on the tender.
My MTH FT-Units have four - two on each truck.
If there is room (and there seems to be), why wouldn't MTH put them on both the loco and tender for better reliability? (Loaded question - probably "value engineering").
TMCC has to have 4 especially when IR sensor used otherwise the tender has no power for the boards. TMCC has boards in engine and tender. MTH has main board in one location. Even early TMCC with 4 wire harness had same issue. 3 of the 4 used up for serial data, coupler and reverse light. SO they tied AC ground between units and used pickups on tender to power RS. It is not about reliability. It is why sometimes sounds go out on TMCC engine over switches. Tender and engine do not power each other.
In general only minimum necessary are used. Does your FT have 2 individual pickups per truck or a single double roller type.
You seem to be implying some defect in engineering, yet plenty of models are done this way and seem to work fine with out reliability issues. No body in the train industries does redundancy, which is really what your talking about. Not reliability. Some one early on posted it ran fine with no issues. G
