The Bachmann K4 Has Landed

I took delivery of my Bachmann K4 Pacific today. All I can say is wow, this locomotive is awesome. The paintwork is crisp, the detailing is incredible. It makes my Minitrix K4 look pretty crude by comparison.

My K4 Pacific fleet. The new Bachmann model (right) makes the old Minitrix (left) look completely dated.

If looks weren't enough, the model also comes with a factory-installed Soundtraxx decoder. Up until this point, I've been pretty underwhelmed by N Scale sound. I mean come on, what kind of sound are you going to get out of a dime-sized speaker? Well, I can tell you the sound on this loco is amazing. I could hear clearly anywhere in the train room and even down the stairs!

My only minor annoyances with this loco are the whistle, a very high-pitched European-sounding one. This "banshee" whistle may be accurate for PRR freight steamers, but passenger engines had a much deeper three-chime whistle. The another annoyance was the trailing truck was out of gauge and would consistently hop the rails on a few turnouts.