I wish I had the cash to buy a second 2-6-6-2, just so I could do a better job installing the DCC. Frankly, that was a real pain for me, and it's taken me a year to get the thing running right.
As for it's performance, (when I can keep it running), mine has no trouble pulling the 7-9 cars I tend to run my trains with, even without traction tires. It'll also completely outpull any other locomotive I've got. I ran it coupled to each other locomotive, pulling opposite directions, and it simply started rolling along. I agree though that it is quite noisy. It seemed to be running a little quieter today though, so perhaps it just requires excessive run in time. Or I'm going deaf.