Hello all,
Since I had no school today for local elections, I decided today would be a great day to go purchase my CSX F 40 from Lionel. While I was there I did get kind of worried that the one I would buy would be defective, but I reassured myself saying that only the Amtrak ones had the issues.
Man, could I have been more wrong?
Once I got home I took the engine out of the box and admired the beauty. Lionel did do a great job with the paint on these engines. However functionally speaking, these engines are not that great. Once I put on the track I removed the panel on the roof in order to put it in the program mode. As expected, this was very difficult because it is very tightly on. There are a few scuffs on the edges now. Once I had Flipped the switch and turned on track power, this is when the issues arose. At first the engine did absolutely nothing, which is what I expected it to do. Then about two seconds later, the lights on the engine begin to flicker like crazy and the horn sounds repeatedly cut on and off. I was very taken aback by this and then it got even worse. The left number board completely burnt out, and the horn sequence begin quilling and even the HEP generator sounds begin to turn on. Keep in mind this is before I touched the legacy remote or even programmed the engine.
I am very disappointed with the engine, however I do understand that there were many others like me that had the same issues. This engine will be going back to Lionel for sure, and I hope they can fix it. I do understand this is not the worst thing to happen ever because this is definitely just a first world problem, but I did pay lots of money for the engine, and I expected it to work.
