My Challenger finally arrived yesterday from Tony’s, so I thought I’d give it a spin on the old Scenic Ridge layout sitting in the garage.

When I first opened the box, I noticed a little arm was loose, connecting to the front right cyclinder. The pin was still in the box, so I put that back in. No biggie I thought at first. Well, that was just the foreshadow of what was about to happen.

The sounds are pretty cool and good (little loud though). It ran great on the layout…. for about 10 mins. In the middle of the filming, the arms on the right front axle popped off. You can see the arm hanging off as it rounds the corner near the end of the video before it jumps the track.

I haven’t really given it a good look over yet to see if it’s just something that can be popped back in. Major bummer that an engine this expensive by Athearn is having these kinds of problems not 20 mins out of the box.

Here’s the video though of the Challenger making its brief appearance on the Scenic Ridge layout:

There’s also this version:

Hi-Def Quality .m4v video (116MB)
(Requires Quicktime 7. Apple TV compatible):