Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

After my bad experience with the O Gauge I was very hesitant to order another Lionel. But this is something else. With my experience with the O gauge;and since this doesn't need to be on a track to run,I decided to battery up the tender and connect it to the Locomotive and place it on the hard wood floor,figuring that if this works,THEN I'll assemble the tracks and put on the other two cars. I grabbed the remote control pushed the on-off switch to ON and turned the Directional switch to half way forward....nothing happened...then I remembered I'd forgotten to put batteries in the RC. Turned it over and as you could probably guess,when I put in that second battery the train and tender shot forward (The switch was STILL on and the direction STILL to half way forward)LOL. I continued with the assembly of the tracks and the addition of the other two cars. I could see that if you don't have the tracks setup on a hard level surface you're gonna have problems with train disconnects and possibly track disconnects too,so watch out for these possible problems. I decided after a few hours of having fun that I should investigate the idea of 9.6 VDC rechargeable batteries. Id heard others,here, mention a few batteries that wouldn't fit so I decided to find out what would fit. Called Lionel customer service; open 9-5 EST @ 586-949-4100 Amy there said they have listed two such batteries,BOTH Radio Shack,one is 23-342 a 1000 mAh Ni-Cad and the other is 23-432 a 1600 mAh NMH. I did two searches on the Radio Shack website. The 23-342 came up with nothing;the 23-432 resulted in a 23-1171 which turned out to be the 1600 mAh battery and the charger. When I manage to get over to a Radio Shack I'll pick up the pair and report back as to: if and how well they work. Battery update: I bought the 23-1171 @ Radio Shack since I can't add a picture of what it looks like,here's a link [...] WHOA does this thing FLY NOW! After charging the 10 hrs.the package recommended I checked the DC voltage on the battery pack it was 11.03. So if you want one that fits and comes with a charger get yourself to a Radio Shack.