A bit wound too tight?

No, no, no…the title is not alluding to our current political climate around here. Even though one could write volumes about the political disfunction around here in DC, let us just stick with model trains.

My readers will remember that just a few day ago a mysterious package arrived at the front door. It turned out to be some model trains which I had ordered long ago and also forgotten about long ago. Atlas Model Railroad Company had finally released their long promised New Jersey Transit ALP-45, plus coaches, in N scale.

I duly did write a blog about my first impressions of this set. Generally those were quite positive. However two things glaringly stood out: the distance between the coaches and the speed of the locomotive.

The locomotive just crawled along. Even at full DCC throttle it just ran at a “flower picking” pace. It seems that other readers had the same issues with their newly acquired locomotives. One of them, John Bruce, suggested to change some of the CV’s on the locomotive decoder. Usually I am loath to change any of the “Configuration Variables” on any locomotive decoder. It is incredibly easy to screw this up and ruin the decoder. But I thought: full speed ahead and damn the torpedoes…pun intended! Luckily I did not ruin my decoder, but the locomotive still only runs at a really slow pace. Nothing had changed.

Perhaps it was now time to contact the support people at Atlas Model Railroad Company. So I sent off a short, concise email describing the issues with my brand new locomotive. This is what I got back from them:

Hmmmm…not particularly helpful I would say. As I contacted Atlas I had also sent an email to TrainWorld, were I had bought the unit. Their reply was quite a bit more illuminating:

So, thanks TrainWorld. Looks like I will be going up to the attic and run my train for a while. Stay tuned!