I have not heard (at least I don't remember) of Molitow Pens before, thanks. They sat 'permanent' but I would be curious to see if it easily wears off inside the front wheel slot like painting the rods do. It does look good though, doesn't it?
I just recently saw something about those pens but filed it away in my increasingly unreliable memory bank.
I’m sure my son ran Lexi on the layout we had set up during summer break but now I don’t remember if there were any performance issues with her. I pretty much stuck to a few Plarail diesels when I ran my own trains, so I probably didn’t pay much attention to the TM2 engines.
I’ve had some similar problems running Trackmaster 2 locomotives over transitions to tan and especially Plarail track. James also seems to have problems similar to Lexi with switch points and sharp turns. Both of them seem very imbalanced. In both cases, they seem to be too long and too light in the front.
the transition between 2 types of tracks is not very smooth.
To be fair, the Sodor Spiral is pretty tough for a lot of trains to negotiate. I don’t have a lot of issues with Trackmaster 2 track but normally, I avoid the “roller coaster ride” features. Our trains usually only have to overcome minor grades and bridges.