Performance

The DCC sound system controls the locomotive, and begins with a fairly lengthy start-up process for all four engines. Once the engines are ‘running’ the decoder imposes its own rate of acceleration. Start-up and initial movement was smooth and impressive.

However, once the locomotive reached points or curves it became erratic. Of course, momentary current interruptions will stop a decoder-fitted model and each time the Fell stopped, it had to go through the sound start-up sequence again before it would move. While my North American diesels have no issues with current collection, none of them has a rigid chassis of this type. It soon became apparent that the problem lay with the Fell’s pick-ups and the need for the coupled wheelsets to move sideways on the curves.

On one side, three of the four phosphor-bronze wiper pick-ups were out of contact with the wheel when the wheelset was at its maximum sideways movement. Indeed, one of those four pick-ups was not in contact with the wheel at any point in its movement. Successful adjustment of the pick-ups would require removal of the keeper plate and, having had a bad experience once before when attempting to tweak a review sample, that was something

I was not prepared to do.

I did manage a successful test in the end by turning off the sound so that, when the locomotive stalled, it would move off again without having to wait for all the engine sounds. In this instance, I had a mixed rake of ten coaches behind the Fell, running at speed, and it was certainly capable of taking more. However, what was even more impressive was that, without the DCC sound, the mechanism itself is silky smooth and silent. Indeed, if it wasn’t for the pick-up issue, this would have been one of the best chassis I’ve ever tested.