Well Nick, funny you should ask where I can speak freely.
A long long time ago Aristo put all the weights in the loco, i.e. installed.
Then about half way through the Dash 9 production (maybe the 2nd production run) they only installed one of the 3 weights and the other two were in the box, in a really dumb place. The loose weights bounced around and smashed up the pilots of the diesel in shipping (pictures on the Aristo forum)
Then we were told that from then on, locos would be shipped with only one weight, and the other 2 were "free" but you had to pay shipping of $5. Not free, but close.
Then the economy got bad, and we also got the E8.
Surprise! NO weights.
And surprise: no weights available for purchase at time of introduction.
OK, so everyone waits, and now of course we are expecting the "free" $5 weights.
Oops... the price of the weights goes crazy... and they are no longer made of lead. Some people pay $30 plus shipping for their weights, and the weights go from 1.96 pounds each (times 3 for a loco) to about 1.09 pounds each.
By the way, the E8 weights are the same as the Dash-9 weights, so why did we wait?
The E8 weighs about 9 pounds out of the box, considerably less than any other diesel made by Aristo of the same size or even near the same size.
Now everyone is mad, and then Aristo tells us that the E8 needs no weights, because it pulls shorter trains, made of passenger cars.
Hmm... if you want to talk about cars that are heavy and do not roll well, your first choice is passenger cars, whether from Aristo or USAT.
I put 6 pounds in shot in mine, slightly more than the 3 weights it was set up for.
I was also told that this was too much weight, it might wear out the gears prematurely (again by Aristo), but why wouldn't the Dash 9 or SD45 do the same? Same gearbox.
So, it's sort of a hilarious story. I crack up every time I think it through.
Regards, Greg