Added to the layout a few weeks ago is a pair of Broadway Limited SD40-2 with in the Florida East Coast red and gold scheme. On the original layout that I had 20 years ago I had a LifeLike BL2 in the FEC red and gold scheme, it still looks good today, and it still runs. However, this layout is DCC, and I think I paid all of $40 or so for that little BL2. The amount of work it’s going to take to retrofit that BL2 to DCC just isn’t worth it.
So, when BLI announced the SD40-2 with Paragon 4 in the red and gold FEC colors they were added to the shopping list.
BLI’s got a reputation for unreliable and poor running engines, folks either love them or hate them. These two engines bring my roster of BLI built engines to 4, with the other two being an SW2 and NW7. Other an issue where the NW7 went unresponsive – likely because I screwed up the programming I haven’t had any issues with any of the BLIs I have.
The thing is, BLI’s engines are very well detailed. While I’m far from a rivet counter, every photo I’ve seen of a BLI engine and the engines that I’ve both from them have more detail than I’d expect from an N scale mode at the price point that BLI sells at.
And their price point is good… Every engine they sell is DCC and sound equipped and you can often find them for just under $200 for most of their models… I love Kato stuff, but for under $200 you’ve got options for DCC only – not DCC sound.
I went with the pair of engines for two reasons – first, since I don’t have a wye running a pair of engines tail to tail allows me to reverse the direction of a train simply by doing a run around to the other side. High hood fans are likely also pointing out that if I ran high hood forward I could do the same thing, but I’m not sure I’m a high hood fan honestly. Since both the front and rear of the SD40-2 has ditch lights it’s an option, and BLI’s version has working ditch lights in both direction so if I wanted to could run these high hood forward.
BLI says that the Paragon 4 sounds better than the Paragon 3. I don’t think that my ears are good enough to figure out if it’s true. I’ve also already made some tweaks to the sound settings to suit how I want things to sound on my layout and that may have an impact on the sound too, but I don’t think that they sound bad.
There’s a lot of hope that the Paragon 4 is more reliable than the Paragon 3. Again, not having run into issues with the Paragon 3 that I wasn’t the cause of I can’t weigh in on that either.
The one thing that I think I’m seeing, is that I think one of the engines is a little jerky at low speed. But I don’t know if that’s actually the case or if I’m imagining it…
