I received my American railroads version today. It arrived with a wheel in the pilot hanging loose, but I was able to snap it back in. It has the Mars light which is very cool. This, the cab detail and lights and the whistle are my favorite features.
Like TOKELLY, I installed a scale coupler. I removed the tender shell (6 screws), unclamped the C clamp holding the rear truck on, unscrewed the electro coupler from the truck, and unplugged the wire connector from the circuit board. As TOKELLY mentioned, the electro coupler’s wire connector will not fit through the hole in the chassis where the truck attaches, but instead of cutting the wires, I pulled them out of the connecter so they could be snapped back in (I sell these on ebay).
I also had to bend the coupler pad bracket because it does not fit the hole locations in the tender.
I had a lot of trouble trying to program it in Legacy. Eventually I got it to take the number ID I was trying to assign. The problem is it doesn’t respond reliably to my Legacy signal. I have to try repeatedly to get it to start up or shut down, the speed control is all over the place, and I have no control over the smoke volume or forward/reverse. I tried one of my other Legacy locos just to make sure something hasn’t gone haywire, but it ran fine. So the Berk will have to be sent in for service, but I will run it for several hours first to see if any other issues arise before shipping it off to Concorde.
The good news is that I then ran it with DCC, and it ran perfectly.
Here’s a video and pictures.
