I notice you running larger power such as Athearn SD70 and SD40-2 units, do they derail often on your 18" curves? Do you have problems with cars such as this crane on those curves?
@@DavidMaiers-s5r Thanks, David. No, I do not have any issues at all running 6 axle diesels and freight cars (like the crane) on 18” radius curves. The only caveat I will offer is making sure your track work is precise and that you have good technique. I had one section where I put a track spike in a little too far and it caused one rail to be slightly higher than the other and I had a couple locomotives that derailed in that spot. Once I removed the nail, it was perfect!
I would like to see those cooling fans on top of the engine work or moving like the real ones wouldn't you...I think that would badazz other than that I love it
I just completed a Walthers 42' maintenance of way flatcar with all its detail. I cut off the molded on grab irons and drilled holes for bronze phosphor wire grabs. Cut off the stirrups and added some from Accurail. I even went between each board with my razor saw & cut the grooves deeper & stressed the deck, even put a hole through the deck with the saw. When I added the weight you could see the weight through the hole I made in the deck so I got out the drill and drilled a hole through the weight so you could see through the hole to the track below. Had to add some realism. I hate RTR (Ready To Roll). I'd much build my rolling stock from kits. Then I can add as much detail as I want. Cheers from eastern TN
@ck7813 Since you have Loksound V in all your Geeps, you need to make a video with your Black, your Orange and White High Hood Phase III and the Orange and White Phase IIs that you Detailed all MUed and pulling a Manifest! Love your work and your videos have been very helpful and inspiring... I remember the late 70s down here on the Southern end of the IC's Mattoon District...all 4 Axle Geeps with up to 120 cars rocking along between 10 and 35 mph... Crews usually exceeded Hours of Service before they got to Evansville or back to Mattoon and usually derailed a couple times a week North of Newton... Trains 295 and 296 were scheduled to meet at Newton but seldom did. First train to make it to Olney would scatter its cars all over town to make room for the meet, and they had about 6 blocks of Street Running on Kitchell... Great Show to watch...
it looks like the Illinois Central prototype is an American Crane 250 ton wreck crane and the Athearn model is a Bucyrus Erie 200 ton wreck crane. The kink in the main boom is the key difference. A review of photos of the many Union Pacific wreck cranes seems to indicate that the Bucyrus Erie 250 tons cranes and 200 ton cranes are similar in their booms but not identical. The UP American Crane 250 tons are distinctly different from the Bucyrus Erie 250 ton cranes. The IC crane was built as a diesel crane. I have the original shake the box Athearn 200 ton crane that this appear to be a ready to run version of.
Fact is if a guy is willing to do a bit of extra work, a good old blue box kit would be the way to go on the crane instead of paying all the money. Ive omitted the steam stack and truly dieselized all mine plus sanded off the molded on ladders and added prototypical ladders and grabs plus bought nice sprung buckeye trucks and added shelf couplers for alot less than what this costs. As far as box cars go i do the same with blue box car kits as i refuse to pay 35.00 to $60.00 for one railcar plus your not going to see all the details on the bottom. Basically paying for packaging and i would rather buy blue box and do the exterior details myself. I can do a rail car with better details and all the nice features for around $18.00 to $22.00 a car thats the car, details and weights versus well over $30.00 for a new car.
Yea, with the regular "Athearn" models you will not get the extra details or prototype details we've come to expect with the higher end models. I'm sure they are all the same models minus the different paint schemes. Looks OK though. Nice models. For me, once I buy high end models, it's hard to go back to the run of the mill models.
You just made up my mind. I am in the middle of my first layout that is N scale. What a mistake. I have a 10x12 foot room that will soon see an N scale layout disappear so I can start my HO. I never should have listened to my "friend" that told me to go with N.
@@tyhik9338 Thanks for the comment. I am not 100% sure what you are asking about. If you have a DCC-ready locomotive, you should be able to add a decoder (please note the pin arrangement, there are differences like a 21-pin or a next 18 pin). You should not have to cut any wires off to make it work. If the locomotive you are installing a decoder in does not have a speaker, you may have to solder some wires to the speaker and the decoder board. Before soldering anything, please review the manual(s) that came with your decoder and locomotive. Some brands have a “DCC-buddy” board that the decoder plugs into that has outputs for all of your light and speaker functions. Look for the “SPK” tabs on the board and that is what you need to connect the speaker to. Some boards have a 1mm male/female plug that do not require soldering to the board at all! If this is not what you need, please reply with more details about what you are trying to accomplish.
@@ck7813 I'm trying to install the 58429 decoder in an atlas Metra MP36 DCC ready locomotive and a scaletrains ES44AC DCC ready locomotive and I'm trying to see if they have speakers already installed so I can easily install the decoder but I'm not sure if I can solder to the speakers.
@@tyhik9338 Gotcha! Ok, full disclosure I have not installed a decoder/speaker in either an Atlas brand nor a ScaleTrains brand locomotive. The process should be somewhat similar no matter what brand of locomotive you have. A better video for you might be this one I published a few months ago: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-B0xbzsmjDCg.htmlsi=jyBo0WDrw19p4mbq the speaker installation discussion occurs at about the 5min, 30 second mark. It should be pretty evident if your locomotives have speakers installed already because the should be towards the top of the unit and have two wires running off of them. If the speakers are pre-installed, they should already be wired to the board. If you still have questions, it may not hurt to reach out directly to the tech support from each company for specific instructions for their locomotives
Your comment at 17:59 is a bit misleading where you said you can only run one locomotive at a time. In actual fact you can run as many as you want provided you're within that 3 amp max. I'm currently running 4x loco's (3 of which have sound decoders), at a time on my N scale layout and only pulling 0.3 amps. Simply use the Recall button to swap between loco's. Plugging in a second throttle is useful when you have a friend over running their trains.
On 9185 they were upgraded to warm LEDs. That locomotive is so old that it was factory installed with incandescent lights and an original Tsunami 1 decoder. About 4 years ago I had it upgraded to LEDs, a Loksound 5, a Keep Alive, and a Scale Sound Systems speaker. The two orange/white GP9s are factory lights (LED).
Great Review... just a couple things I would like to add. One is the addition of the IC specific "Tool Box" located just behind the Fuel Filler and Emergency Cutoff Button on the Engineer Side Skirt... Walthers should be commended for adding them as they certainly add to the character of the IC's Geeps. Another is that Four IC Road numbers are available if you include the DCC Ready versions. (yep, I got all four of 'em) Like you, I also have a couple of the IC phase II GP9s in the Mainline offering a couple years ago and have most all the parts I need to upgrade them. One thing holding me back is "Hemming the Skirts"...in about 1961 (emphasis on "about") IC began to make subtle changes to the High-Hood Geeps. Adding the nose mounted Bell, the "Tool Box" and "Hemming the Skirts". Also the White Frame Stripe ( remember, this is before the Orange and White was adopted in 1967) was widened. By about 1964, all the IC's GP7s, and the phase I and II GP9s had got their Skirts Hemmed, the new Tool Box and nose mounted Bell and the appearance was updated. About the only details Walthers missed are the Exhaust Screens (Athearn's are a wonderful etching, but sometimes IC removed them...) and the little visors over the Classification Lights (Intermountain did them on the Paducah GP10's on the rear end of the IC and ICG versions). Both details are nice to have, but aren't deal breakers in my book. I really want to trim the Skirts on my Phase IIs, but I don't know if I will. All said, I am still happy with the Mainline version... I'm not knocking it. But Walthers really did an Exceptional Job capturing the essence of the IC's Geeps with the Proto version.
North Wilkesboro has been brought back to life here in the 2020 decade. Also, 1992 the last great season Bill Elliott had til he got in the Evernham car in the early 2000's.
Great Review. Just got the DCC/Sound 6040 & 6041. I have a question What DCC system were you using when testing these? Digitrax, NCE or other? Most layouts I work on and club layouts around here are Digitrax. But I was trying it out on my boss' s test track which is NCE. And I was unable to get the flashing roof lights to work with button 6. But a few others were different on NCE. I'll try our Digitrax layout at the museum I volunteer on building and maintaining their layout and maybe F6 on my 402D handheld will work.
Thanks, David. I am using a Digitrax Super Chief command station. I also used my test layout which has a Digitrax Zephyr starter. F6 will engage the upper cap lights that "oscillate." I am not sure why that is not working on your NCE system. The only thing I can think of is to check your function mapping using Lokprogrammer. It will be interesting to see if you get get F6 to activate them on your Digitrax layout.
I part purchased the same digitrack system. And have it mounted on my layout, but I'm confused As how to hook up the module that you plug in your controller to the base unit. I was wondering if you might be able to. explain to me. where that module is plugged in in the back. as there are multiple places to plug it in and where you plug it in on the base unit.
Thanks, Doug. The DT602 comes with a cord (that looks like an old-school phone cord) and has an RJ12 jack on each end (again, looks like an old phone jack you would plug into your wall). One end plugs into the end of the DT602 throttle and the other end plugs into the "Loconet" jack on your command station. Just look for the word "Loconet" and plug it in and you are ready to go!
I legitimately do not remember, I am guessing that I purchased a Loksound decoder that came with a cube speaker. That would make the most sense. It is not a Scale Sound System speaker, I do know that.
Hello, Thanks for the great videos. I'm having a heck of a time trying to get the shell off my Walthers SW7, might you have any tips, Walthers doesn't offers much help
Thanks, Carlo. I do not have any specific tips, I remember the shells were tough to remove, just make sure you have all of the screws removed and that you do not try to force it off. Use firm, consistent force and try to shimmy it off.
Fun fact: I bought this exact locomotive and road number (minus the A/C unit) from Atlas. I've been very pleased with its performance. Athearn makes a very fine product too, though.
All of the rail cars are Athearn, the black cars were released about 7-8 years ago and they included the piggyback trailers with them (search my old videos). The brown cars were released probably 4-5 years ago and they did not include the trailers. Many companies produce HO scale trailers that you can find at your hobby store.
@ck7813 there aren't many train focused hobby stores in Phoenix it seems and I've been struggling to find IC/ICG liveried products. I see walthers is selling the trailers without the rolling stock so i was hoping to modify IC/ICG flatcars or repaint already built TOFC rolling stock.
I have not tried this to give a first-hand testimonial but there is no reason why it would not work. If you want confirmation I would recommend you reach out to Digitrax customer support and they can confirm if it is compatible.
Looking at replacing my 6 month old broken NCE Power CAB (don't ask). I wish I had seen this system first because I think it is more what I want. Oh well we live and learn. Thank you for the demo really helped to see the functions of the Digitrax.
Nice work! I have the SSS speakers in most of my sound-equipped locos. They are so efficient, I found it necessary to turn down the overall volume. ESU tends to run the default volume "wide open." I'd suggest about 50%. Also, some roads make the top (cab) light run as a MARS. I don't know if ICG did this, but the decoder sfx can make that happen.
Not only did i work there, i modeled them .....sadly as a craftsman i gave up on model railroading and then re-entered a few years ago modeling brasilian railways .....really sad how no one wants to pick up a razor saw or a sheet of microscale decals ....
How much lighter would you say the locomotive got after losing those weights? I wish Athearn would do upgraded chassis like they did with the SD40T-2/SD45T-2 series locos.
Thank you, while I did not do a pre- and post- weight assessment of the locomotive, the weight loss is negligible. The front weight is probably less than an ounce and the rear may be 1 ounce. While the speakers to add weight back to the locomotive, they are certainly not the weight of the lead. Overall, you will not notice.
