The Walthers Trainline GP9M is not a Life-like derivative. The Trainline GP9M was the flagship of the Trainline series in the mid 90's. It's derived from a Cox model that Walthers bought the tooling for, but AFAIK, its has upgrades to the shell tooling and Walthers own drivetrain. I've got two Trainline GP9M's and two other Trailnline locos and they are all smooth runners. Not today's state of the art super-slow of course, but I wouldn't describe any as jerky.
Based on all that I'm going to take a different tack and suggest that there isn't anything fundamentally wrong with the design that would make them "life-like". These locos should not be running rough. Have you opened it up and cleaned and relubed it?
If you have cleaned and lubed it, there is probably something broken in the mechanism. Walthers still lists them in-stock, so I would think that they either can offer replacement parts or suggest an upgrade.
Based on all that I'm going to take a different tack and suggest that there isn't anything fundamentally wrong with the design that would make them "life-like". These locos should not be running rough. Have you opened it up and cleaned and relubed it?
If you have cleaned and lubed it, there is probably something broken in the mechanism. Walthers still lists them in-stock, so I would think that they either can offer replacement parts or suggest an upgrade.
