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Hi guys, In 1989, I went to the old HL Child & son's shop in Northhampton, MA on our annual trip there during Valentines Day Weekend. It used to be a huge hobby shop that had lots of G scale trains, plus all the other scales, and dolls, etc.. That year, I was shocked to see 4 Lionel large scale Atlantics on the wall, and for something like $189 a piece. Great Northern, Chessie Steam Special, NYC, and Santa Fe. After some deliberation, I plunked down all my Christmas and Birthday money for the Great Northern locomotive. I was amazed at the detail (this was 1989), and couldn't wait to run it. At that time, all I had was LGB: Stainz, a 2060 diesel, and the 2017D stainz-american. Those engines would handle about a half dozen of the LGB 2 axle cars I had on hand with the standard 4' dia curves with ease. Never had any issues with them. When I got the Atlantic out, and it dwarfed the other engines, I was super excited. Then, I applied power, and was underwhelmed. This big engine could barely handle the lone 3080 passenger car I had (the LGB 4 axle western car). Forget trying to run up any sort of a grade. And then, to add insult to injury, the locomotive stopped running forward. So, I sent it back to the shop for repair. 6 weeks later, the engine was returned to me, repaired. This time, I was more careful, but still managed to mess something up with regular 12 year old running. After the second failure and only about a week of actual play time with the engine, we took it back and turned that locomotive in to three aristo cars, an LGB combine, and a half circle of 1500 curves. But, after seeing how George Schreyer modified his to be a more consistent runner, I've been tempted to get another engine for short passenger trains. I've been able to resist the ones that show up periodically on eBay. Today, I got another 4-4-2 notice from ebay for one and it rekindled my interest. How may of you have had these engines and did some minor modifications make these in to reliable runners?