I for one am excited to see these being offered. As for the no sound and smoke in the locos, I totally get this after installing DCC with sound in a Lionel 0-6-0 Dockside. It almost doesn't fit! And do you have any idea how much it costs to develop a micro multi layered PCBA? The fact they did what they did with Legacy is amazing! After getting to see 4014 up close and personal this last week, and then seeing this announcement on the drive home, this has been a great week. I love these older and more colorful style steamers, and am happy to see some that won't look like cheap plastic toys and are still not super expensive. I saw those LGB ones this week at Ogden, they look like big plastic trains, not worth the $10k they are asking, IMHO. So instead of saying only fools will spend that, I'll just simply not buy myself some. As for these Lionel ones, I'm going to order them as I think they are worth my hard earned money. An I hope Lionel does make some freight and other cars for them in the future, as well as other styles of early locomotives, not just 4-4-0s.
Now about DCC on them. They really have DCC? What about the sound cars, will they also respond to DCC? And will you publish the CVs in the manual, or on the website? Will you be able to adjust the CVs? I'll be running MTH PS3 and LokSound L equipped locomotives with DCC, and would love to be able to program them all to the same function keys on my remote, as well as speed match them.
And another question for Dave since he said they have DCC because of the BEMC. Does this mean that other recent BEMC locomotives like the Heisler and the LionMaster Class A also have DCC already and I can run them that way? That's make me so happy I wouldn't have to take them off the track when I switch between the two command systems (Legacy and DCC.). I would love if all Legacy locomotives came with DCC going forward. Legacy is still my favorite command system, but DCC is wonderful for my older locomotives to upgrade to command from conventional.
