MartyE's IMHO

This IMHO looks at my new MTH RK Decapod!

MTH PRR Decapod # 30-1176-1

July 2002

In this IMHO I will review MTH’s RK 2-10-0 PRR Decapod that I bought back in April after visiting the great layout of Larry LaJambe. After seeing his RK Challenger I knew I had to try a ProtoSound 2 engine for my pike. And since up until now the Pennsylvania Railroad had little presence on my rails I thought I’d add a Pennsy steamer to the mix.

MTH has been incorporating it’s next generation of Protosounds into it’s engines for the last two and half years preparing for the day that DCS will be released. That being said a lot of the features that this engine has in conventional mode make it prize even if you never plan to buy DCS.

Let’s first take a look at the Decapods details. It has molded in piping and separately applied bell, whistles, and handrails. The cast detail is crisp and well done. Rivets are plenty throughout the boiler all the way to the cab. The cab has molded back head detail and firebox glow that is fine for the price level of this engine. The graphics are well applied and very crisp. The over all length will top out at 231/2 inches. The feel is heavy, 8+ pounds and well built and should withstand a few opps!

The tender matches the engine in fine molded details with added grab rails. Details are molded into the rear deck that include hatches and valve handles. The coal load is molded in and looks just fine to me. Pennsylvania is lettered across both sides and looks great. The back deck is painted rust red and adds quite a bit to the look of the train. The tender has a light mounted in the body for when the train is backing up.

The only down side to the looks of this engine is that pesky tether, that connects the tender to the engine. I hope now that DCS is out Mike spends some effort to rid himself of it. There is not doubt that this follows the fine tradition of quality castings that Mike has created for himself. Detail on lower end models seems to be a high spot with MTH Trains and it only gets better as they move forward.

So how does it run? I’ll break it down into two sections, conventional and command with DCS. Either way this engine performs well with few exceptions.

Let’s start with conventional mode. The minimum radius is O42 probably because of the driver setup. The first time you apply power, I was using a PW ZW, you get a nice rich sound of the locomotive coming to life. What an improvement over PS1. As you start out the chuff starts out as a little wisp before moving into a full robust chuff. What’s even more amazing is the smoke that accompanies the chuff. A great plume of smoke emerges from the stack for each chuff. MTH does smoke right for steam, there is no doubt it is the best in the business. There is an on/off switch to turn smoke off if it gets a little dense in your room. Couplers are activated with sound via the bell button ballet, but I found it much easier than on my PS1 engines.

Speed control, one of the features of PS2 keeps the engine running at a constant speed regardless of incline, declines or load. The Decapod does not disappoint. The engine ran smooth at a variety of speeds with a different set of loads hooked to it. It is equipped with a precision fly wheel motor and traction tires that should give you years of maintenance free operations.

Now that you have it running you may have to clear the track of livestock so blow the whistle. The whistle on the Decapod is unlike any in my roundhouse. It is very high pitched but very realistic to some of the smaller steamers I’ve heard. I don’t know if it is prototypical but I like it. Bell functions as well as PSAs are activated using the bell button and a combination with the bell whistle button. The PSA is a generic loop that I heard on Larry's Challenger. This is the one sound feature that falls short. The quality is great the dialog is fine but it sounds like the fireman and brakeman are reading from cue cards on a really bad movie set. I know it’s only toys trains but if you want to improve this is an area of improvement. The background and occasional sounds are a fine touch to the over all resonance of this engine. You would be hard pressed to find a finer engine to operate in conventional.

But wait! DCS is now out so how does it work with DCS? Unbelievable. DCS takes this engine to the next level. In this part though I’m going to keep it on the basic operation as DCS has a load of features that just are too many to go through. FYI DCS is MTHs command control system. It allows multiple engines to operate on the same track independently from each other. It is quite an ambitious system that I hope to review later.

Speed is now controlled in scale MPH via the DCS remote. You can achieve very fine speed steps and this makes it easy when running multiple trains and keeping them spaced. But in my opinion the best is the control of smoke and sound. You can vary the chuff rate of the Decapod from 1 to 16 chuffs per revolution. I found 4 to be not only prototypical but also just cool at low and high speeds. Play with this feature but remember all changes you make in DCS are held when you go back to conventional. Labored chuff is also a really cool feature adding a harsher chuff and a heavier puff when applied. This is my favorite effect of DCS on a steam engine. Variable sound volumes and all the gimmicks were available through DCS as well as coupler on the fly.

The only problem that I experienced was that my Decapod developed a binding between, as far as I could tell 3^rd and the flange of the 4^th driver. This caused some stalling and DCS trying to compensate. Each time I had to physically shift the engine or reverse it via the remote to clear the bind. The bind seemed to be cause by the flange of the 4^th driver coming in contact with the 3^rd drivers flat surface. I took a bit of emery cloth to the flange and it seems to have helped it. I also noted some rough running while in DCS control and the table seemed to shake a bit excessive. This seemed to subside as well but I am going to keep watching.

Well this is starting to get a bit longer than most of IMHO so I’ll end it here. For the money, MSRP was around $450 and I paid $370 I got one fine addition to my roundhouse. The look feel and operation of this engine was very good except for the binding I experienced. I hope I cured it. I would highly recommend this engine to anyone. You will be happy to have this in your roundhouse and I look forward to having it on my pike for years to come.

Like I said I could go through all the DCS features but I don’t have that kind of time so let me say this, DCS will enhanced all aspects of running the Decapod. But even in conventional mode you can’t go wrong, it is one fine item.