mgagneur
Hello & Welcome to the Forum!
l've done some searching and the following post from another forum, is as close as l could find as an answer to your problem.
SilverBand7 • 203d
I bought one around Christmas time last year when they first came out. As far as detail goes, the loco shell and tender shell are made of plastic. Make of that what you will.
I run a Digitrax Super Chief on my layout. Every time I ran this loco on it, I've had an array of problems, such as sounds coming on even when you don't press a button on the remote and the loco suddenly speeding in reverse. At first I thought I had gotten a faulty product and had it exchanged for another one, but that one ended up doing the same thing. I'm not sure what these Lion Chief decoders have against Digitrax or what, but I've never had this happen with a loco before.
My suggestion is if you do plan on getting one, be ready to do some maintenance. The way I fixed the problems on mine was simply replacing the Lion Chief decoder and plugging in a Digitrax 9-pin decoder in its place. Now, the loco runs better, but I still have a rather sour feeling towards it.
Happy Rails...
dave