Fleet Review: BLI Baldwin Centipede

This review is way past due, partly because of my laziness, and partly because of an issue involving the locomotives themselves. But more on that later.

These bad boys are as cool as it gets. Baldwin Locomotive Works started building these beasts back in 1945, to 3 different railroads. On the Pennsylvania they were mostly run in semi-permanent A-A pairs. Resulting in a combined feather light 1.2 million pounds (600 tons), and a hearty 6000hp per pair. These guys were built to haul mass, and the N scale ones do well, in keeping that linage going.

I should get a 4 track signal bridge

First things first though. Paint! Its nice! what more can I say that hasn't been said about nearly any other modern N scale engine. the lines are crisp, wording is legible and the Brunswick Green glistens in the florescent layout lighting like an emerald covered in sharpie ink.

Inside, you have a standard 5-pole motor with 2 hefty flywheels(that work surprisingly well), your DCC board is rear mounted and each unit has 1 lovely speaker in nice little housings that allow it to produce some robust N scale grumble. The chassis is a heavy hunk of cast steel and is not split like some other engines. Lighting is obviously LED and is a nice warm white. Most Broadway Limited engines have dual mode decoders, so for those of you who have no DCC, you can run them on your layout. Just be warned that you will not have access to all the functions. Only the diesel engine and idle sounds. No horn, no bell, no cow and pig loading sounds. 

 

                                               A unit (back)                                       also A unit (front)

 Even though both engines are technically A units and can be run as 2 separate locos (which I do a lot), they are, specifically the ones Broadway Limited sells in pairs, set up in an A-B fashion. all this basically means is the the front unit, runs all regular like, where as the rear "A" unit is actually set up to run in reverse. So in DCC for the rear unit, reverse is forward and forward is reverse. This is slightly more annoying in DC mode as if you get it wrong you may have to pick up the damn things and physically switch em around.

 the draw-bar is on the left, wheels are in the baggie

Inside the box you get 4 extra little driver sets with traction tires. you have to fiddle with the trucks to install them but as long as you take it slow and follow the directions BLI has on their website its a piece of cake. I only used 2 of them, the engines together pull more cars than I own, and are fairly beefy without them.
You also get a little draw bar in the box along with a pair of micro-trains couplers. The draw-bar permanently couples the engines together, which is arguably best if you plan to keep then planted on your layout and double head them(as per the prototype). It screws into the coupler pocket just like the MT knuckles do. Though, kind of annoying for me, was that no screws are provided, and I don't have any just laying around so I had to improvise with some watch screws. so heads up there.

 There's a reason its called a centipede

As for pick up? Its great, you got 16 wheels picking up juice, so there should be no problems in that regard. That is however if you get a set of second run centipedes. when I first received my set, they ran, well...awful. pick up was trash, stalling every few inches, maybe I would get a foot or 2 if I was lucky. It was incredibly frustrating. especially because I dropped a pretty penny on them, and I felt like I just blew a nice wad of cash. I'm not very good with electronics, and I was kinda scared I would make what ever the problem was worse. So since they were under warranty I gave BLI a call and sent em' back. Turns out that the production run I just so happen to have bought was for some odd reason greased up with non conductive lube, and was the source of all that stalling. But! after a 3 week wait, they came back and run like champs. I wouldn't expect this problem with every unit, but its a minor one and easy to fix. But just be wary of that when you buy.
Oh, and for those of you who run code 55 track, have fun regauging  all 24 of those wheels!

A N5 caboose and a centipede. what else do you need?

All in all, despite all that hoopla with the lube, these are good engines and run(and sound) just as nice as they look. They pull like mule/s and definitely turn heads where ever they run. They come in Southern, Mexican, UP(fantasy) and Pennsy paint jobs, but I'm sure many people will find an excuse to buy at least one, there just too cool not too!