On My Workbench

I really ought to put Steve Jones' Electric Nose: On My Workbench on my blogroll. It's really a blog, although it lacks permalinks. Steve is not only a good railway modeller, but he's a good writer too. And he's as opinionated as any blogger. Read what he says about the Dapol Pendolino:

A great shame, then, that the Dapol Pendolino is of little use as anything other than a toy - I think the real Pendolinos are fine machines and would kill for a decent model.

The Pendolino isn't converted to DCC (I'd judged it to be a waste of a decoder) but was having a quick wobble round the layout as loco zero. If you are tempted to convert one then be very careful of which decoder you choose. My model has a stall current of well over 2 amps - a figure that will blow most normally-rated chips. A heavy duty decoder would be required, which given the poor quality of the model would probably be throwing good money after bad. A better bet might be to replace the motor with a superior model and take it from there, but personally I'm unlikely to bother. If it looks like a turkey, sounds like a turkey and moves like a turkey, then the odds are it's a job for Bernard Matthews rather than Bernd Lenz.

Having seen this Dapol creation, I have to agree with him.