EL16 CargoNet from Roco

Introduction

EL16 is one of the locomotives that still can be seen in the freight traffic in the area where I live. The above picture is of EL16 2213 in 1:87 and EL16 2214 in 1:1 scale. Both pictures are taken by me using an iPhone X. I do unfortunately not have any picture of the EL16 in traffic at the time of writing this article, but I hope to get that some day! I also hope to get a picture of the EL16 with the exact same number as I have in model.

The model I decided to buy is a part of the Roco item number 61487 set. The set is created in collaboration with NMJ. It includes the locomotvie and three Lgns container wagons, where the locomotive is created by Roco and the wagons are created by NMJ. Bellow is a picture of the set after I opened it and took out the locomotive.

The box the set comes in is not suitable for transporting the locomotive unfortunately, but that is to be excpected when purchasing the locmotive included in a set.

Fitting additional parts

The model is delivered without the windshield wipers and mirros attached. It's therefor necessary to attach those parts. I started with fitting the mirrors. The set is delivered with two sets of mirrors. One where the mirrors are in a retracted position and one where they are in normal position. Bellow is a picture of the two types of mirrors.

I decied to fit the model with the mirrors in the normal position, which is the one in the top of the picture. I initialy tried to fit them without using glue, which turned out to not work at all. It was therefor time to once again face my nemesis in the model railroad world. The superglue. My problem with the superglue is that it dries to fast, which results in me gluing my fingers more than I glue the plastic!

I ended up using a combination of one my pliers and some toothpicks to apply the glue to the mirror holes following by imediately attaching the mirrors to the holes. I then held them into place until the glue had dried. Bellow is a picture of what the model looked like after glueing the mirrors into place.

The next challenge was the windshield wipers. The first step was to losen them from their holders using the pliers, which was quite easy. The problem was getting them to sit properly in their holes. I was tempted to use super glue, but there where no way that I would be able to fit them quick enogh to their holes.

I therefor decieded to fit them without glue. They where eventually fitted after some trial and error. Bellow is a picture of the locomotive after fitting the windshield wiperes.

Pictures of the prototype

The EL16 is the first locomotive in my collection where I actually have pictures of it in the same livery and era as the model! The result is that I will be able to compare the model I have with what I have seen in real life. The numbers I have seen in real life at the time of writing this article is 2202, 2205 and 2214.

Lets compare the front of the model with the real thing.

We can here see that there are some discrepancies between the model and the true scale one. The most noticable is the CargoNet logo that is missing on the front.

Another noticable difference is the windshield wipers. The wiper blades are vertical in real life, while they are diagonal on the model. The handrails right next to the wiperes is also missing on the model.

The third thing that is different is the hazard decals. The real life locomotive have three triangular hazzard decals. One between the windows and one on each side above each window.

Lets have a look at the side of the locomotive.

There are unfortunately some discrepancies here also. The most noticable one is the ladder on the model, as there is no such ladder on the real locomotive. The incorrect ladder placement results in incorrect alignment of the CargoNet logo.

Another difference is the lack of what looks to be an air condition unit above one of the cabs. The model does not have that. It should be mentioned though that air condition might be something that have been recently added to the real locomotive.

There are also strobe lights on the locomotive pictured, but I do actually belive that it is correct to not have such lights on 2213. The reason I belive that is that I have seen picture of 2211 from 2017 in a locomotive book I own. That particular locomotive did not have such lights, which indicates that not all of the locomotives are equipped with those.

There are otherwise some minor discrepancies in the decals like a missing underscore and the presence of an ASEA decal on the locomotive in addition to a few minor details missing on the model.

Halvard, A railway friend of mine, have generously pointed out to me after I published the article that the model isn't as far from the real life as I have described above. He sent me some pictures of what the 2213 actually looked like in 2009! The 2009 edition of the locomitive had:

• No CargoNet logo in the front.
• No hazzard decals in the front.
• Ladder on the side.
• AESA logo on the side.

So it seems that the model in the set is from 2009 and not 2021. Its unkonwn when the livery on 2213 was changed, but Halvard have told med that 2211 got the new livery in 2016. Thanks for letting me know Halvard. I appreciate when errors are pointed out so I get a chance to correct them.

But enough talk about the locomotive. What about the wagons in the set? Lgns wagons can still be seen in traffic today mixed with other type of container wagons. Bellow are a few pictures of Lgns wagons I have spotted out in the wild. All pictures are dumps from video recordings taken on my iPhone X, except for the last picture which is a picture taken with the same phone.

All the wagons from the one loaded with DB Schenker and Tolpost Globe containers to the one loaded with Bring and DB Schenker containers are Lgns wagons in the above picture.

All of the wagons from the empty one to the one loaded with one white Bring container are Lgns wagons. The white Bring container is on the wagon before the container wagon loaded with the red Posten and the green Bring container.

The wagon loaded with the DB Schenker and Solo container is a Lgns wagon in the above picture.

The above picture shows a parked Lgns wagons.

So there is still quite a few Lgns wagons in operations as you can see from the pictures I have taken. All the pictures are taken in 2024 or 2025. Bellow is a picutre of one of the Lgns containers from the set.

None of the containers I have in my picture collection are identical to the above containers, but several of them are close to the same design. The Lgns wagons do otherwise look to ressemble the real wagon closely when seen from afar. I do unfortunately not have any closeup Lgns shots for comparison as the wagons tends to be parked in difficult to reach locations in the places I have seen them.

Programming the decoder

The locomotive came pre-installed with a Zimo decoder. This is the first locomotive in my collection with a Zimo decoder. Most of my collection have ESU decoders. There is one thing I always reprogram on all of my locomotives, and that is the lights. Some of the reasons why i reprogram them are:

• Locomotives like the EL16 do not have lights that automatically change in the direction of travel.
• Its forbidden to operate a train with red tail lights when you are hauling wagons unless you are driving a locomotive that is excluded from the rule due to technical constraints (Its for example impossible to turn off the red lights on the MZ).
• Locomotives that do shunting typically have white lights in both directions, just like you would have when you reverse your car.

All of the above is easy to do using JMRI on an ESU decoder, impossible to do on a Hornby decoder and a bit wired to do on a Zimo decoder. One of the things i love about the ESU decoder is that you in JMRI have one page where all the function mappings can be done. The typical ESU decoder have 10 tabs in JMRI for customization where all the tabs are easy to understand. The Zimo decoder have 28(!) tabs where settings can be tweeked! It was actually hard to find out which tab to use for programming the lights.

I ended up using the tab named "Swiss Mapping V36+". The default configuration is as following on this particular decoder.

There are several challenges with this view IMO. The first one is that there is no information about the sound mappings! Its therefor quite easy to accidently have the lights function on a function allready allocated to a sound effect! I actually experienced a strange issue with the locomotive during the initial programming related to the sound. The thing was that the locomotive worked just fine in terms of sound on the programming track, but no sound when I placed it on the main track. I then placed it back on the programming track to find the same issue there. Reading out the decoder settings revaled that the sound where muted!

So what was going on? I actually figured out the issue while writing this article. It turns out that F16 and F17 functions where used for volume control. Both of those functions where mapped to lights control by me which ment that the volume would be adjusted every time i turned on some lights. I therefor had to change that programming. Bellow is a screenshot of what the programming looked like at the time of writing this article and after fixing the mentioned issue.

I have not tested out the F5 and F6 light functions yet, so I havent bothered changing them yet. That is something I might do at a later time.

Another thing i might change is the brake length of the locomotive. I am not familiar with the braking length of the EL16, but i sincerly belive that it have a longer stopping distance than what the model currently is configured with.

First run

The locomotive worked straight out of the box, which is great. There where no issues with parts falling of either. One thing I noticed though is that the locomotive is somewhat sensitive to dirt as I had a few stalls during locomotive run-in. That might have been due to dirty track, but its important to remember that this locomotive has four axels. I suspect that all of them have current pickup. I know from experience that locomotives with only four axels have worse performance than locomotives with six axels.

It should be noted though that the stalling issues I experience are minor, espescially compared to my T-class. I would therefor say that the performance of this locomotive is satisfactory. The performance seems to be similar to the EL17 model I own.

Final thoughts

The set itself is nice with a reasonable price tag. You get three wagons plus a locomotive with DCC sound for the price of one locomotive with DCC sound. The locomotive itself is a bit lacking in terms of details, but does otherwise looks like a model of good quality. You can't excpect a high-end model in a set like this one.

It is a bit annoying though that you have to fit both the mirrors and windshield wipers yourself. Its common to have to fit the mirrors, but windshield wipers are usually pre-fitted on model trains. Another annoying thing is that the mirrors and wipers are so hard to fit. It seems to me that the holes are way to tight from the factory. The benefit of that though is that they won't fall of as long as they go deep enogh in.