Well, FedEx delivered my Milwaukee Road FlyerChief 4-8-4 this morning (Saturday), just as I was leaving for the county library to attend the last day of operations for our club's Holiday display. Of course, it came with me to the event, where I ran it for most of the afternoon, pulling my Polar Express passenger cars. Power was supplied by an MRC 9500 (HO) D.C. power pack with volt & amp meters, and I ran it with both the FlyerChief remote and also my cell phone using the BlueTooth app. It ran smoothly, sounded good, and smoked like crazy! The only thing that didn't work was the electrocoupler, but I think that was because the power pack was only putting out 12 volts DC. I know from experience that my LionChief O Gauge locos have coupler operating problems with voltages less than about 15 volts, so I suspect that was the issue here. The 4-8-4 runs every bit as nice as my FlyerChief Berkshire, but smokes way better than the Berkshire. I was never a big fan of model train smoke, so the weak smoke of the Berkshire didn't really bother me (I keep it turned off), but I must admit, I did really enjoy this feature on the 4-8-4. The only downside was that it seemed to run dry pretty quickly, using what seemed like a lot of smoke fluid (but all that smoke has to come from somewhere, right?).
so to answer my own question at the head of this thread, "I like it!" Thanks for everyone's comments.
Bill in FtL
