Nathaniel Cruz She was built with a horn because of her home lines of California where the population is very dense, the horn was used as an absolute warning of the training approaching, or at least that’s how I think it.
They had a horn because it would be foggy in some parts of California at some times and they would use the air horn because it was louder then the whistle.
Gorgeous locomotive, I love the daylight paint scheme, and the Gs engines are one of my favorite class of engines. The whistle on this model sounds great, sounds pretty close to the whistle on SP 4449.
Great review Eric, I ran the black GS-2 while I was at Legacy station. That's a ton of pulling power for a steam engine with only one set of Drivers! That's right there with the Challenger. Thanks for sharing and have a great one!
Wow • A lot of Railroad History with this GS Series. The railroad designers did a lot of fine paint work into their design. The Prototypical design is done very well with the model. This is what brings fun for us Model Railroaders, to see the details in the model. As the narrator for this video you have, what I call a "Great Radio Voice'. You missed your calling, You should be a Radio DJ, not a computer guy. lol. Cheers from Michigan. & Merry Christmas to you and your family.
Thank you very much for making these reviews! I might not be an O-Scale model railroader, but I happen to like watching the new products from Lionel, Weaver, etc, and seeing what they can do, especially the steam locomotives, for the are starting to get to the point where it's hard to tell the difference between the model and the real deal, especially with the sounds and all the special steam effects. If they'd come down a notch or two in price, I'd love to have an engine like this, and I'd personally just like to play around with one of these Legacy steamers just once in my life.
I like the shot of it going under your trestle. You might have wanted to mention that Lionel messed up the Daylight logo on the fireman's side. It's backwards. I know that bugs a lot of SP fans. Still a beautiful engine though.
I think it's best to give some background information on the GS-2's for those who don't know what the GS-2's where. The GS-2's were built by Lima Locomotive Works in 1936 with a total of six locomotives built, numbered 4410-4415. When they were built, they handled passenger trains on the Southern Pacific and they were the locomotives chosen to debut the Southern Pacific's premier passenger train, the Coast Daylight, in 1937, but were later replaced by the GS-3 class. Later, in World War 2, they were painted black and silver and transported troops to the pacific. It the 1950's, their side skirting was removed and they were put on the San Jose-San Francisco commuter trains, "Coast Mail" trains and freight service. When the Southern Pacific was making the transition to diesel, the GS-2's were some of the locomotives to go and all were retired and scrapped by 1956.
All lionel trains have crew talk sounds even the ones I reviewed. I review starter sets and they have crew talk sounds. When you do a short press on the transformer, you get crew talk sounds. But they are optional. As eric said if you don't like them you do not have to use them
very good review Eric, one thing I thought you may like to know is the the stars on the GS locomotives mean something, that told round house crews what type of bearing the engine had, if it was blank it meant a regular bearing, stars meant friction and a circle gear type one, meant roller bearing
This thing would look absolutely giant next to my postwar engines. As much as I love the newer engines, they would just look silly on my seasonal layouts. This, the 611, a nice Berkshire, such stunning (and expensive) engines.
AWESOME review as always Eric!!!!! I have to say that is one gorgeous engine, I love the detail on the front pilot! And the whistle is awesome too! I may have to order one of those bad boys! Thanks for the vid bud and have a great one!
I live in Portland Oregon, there is a 4-8-4 GS-4 Southern Pacific 4449 that is at the Oregon Rail Heritage Foundation. When they blow the whistle I can heard it echoing from my house. It was donated to PDX friends of the SP 4449 in 1958 and they do Holiday Express train rides. You can find more information about this SP 4449 at orhf.org
Hey Eric, great review as always! I have the 6-11127 GS-4 that Lionel made a couple years ago. I too wanted a streamlined set of Daylight cars to go with it, so I bought an older set of MTH cars as I didn't like the red paint on the streamlining (down by the wheels/trucks) that MTH has used on their later cars; the older ones had the lower streamlining painted black which matches the prototype better, and also IMO looks much better. Good luck with whatever you decide to do!
Eric, great review as always. Giving serious thought to adding this one to my stable. I'm a sucker for whistles and horns (as is my wife...). Maybe after my BigBoy shows up, this will be next. Looking forward to your review of that beauty as well.
Because when you just look at it, it does look a lot like a GS4, apart from maybe the single headlight, & possibly smaller size, its not really that much difference in terms of looks. I'm not saying fact, in all honesty i'm no expert on American locos, but I dare say it is possibly due to the looks.
Honestly, I prefer the old tmcc gs2 daylight 4410. Maybe because it was my first full scale engine, but also because it has crew specific dialogue, and the whistle is unique to the daylight. It has that sort of higher pitch whistle which is more accurate in my opinion
the real question is the #4436 GS-4 vs. this #4415 GS-2. One main difference is this model has your standard "maintenance free motor with momentum flywheel", where the #4436 has a high-torque Pittman motor with momentum flywheel. The #4436 also mentions having dual fatboy speakers, according to Lionel's catalogue. It also happens to be $100 less than the model in this video, the #4415, which comes in at $1,300.
Nice video & Review!!! I noticed that the bearings on that hopper are squeaky I'm not sure if you know but to fix that you put oil between the Rotating bearing cap and the truck and it fixes it.
don't worry about what other people say the sounds an crew talk are fantastic , I just wish they would of made a GS-4 with the two head lights as well , that's the one I've been waiting for , when was the last one made does anyone know...
Okay, you have a GS-2 and a GS-6 but where the hell is the GS-4! They shipped her out already with the Daylight paint scheme and in the American Freedom Train Scheme also! They also released a series of American Freedom Train 21" passenger cars if you wanted to know!
I love this engine and the big boy ones. do you think it would be cool or awesome if they made trains from European or even our neighbor to the north Canadian locomotives. The one I think would be cool to bye is the Royal Hudson, most well know train throughout Canada. That's just me talking and my opinion. What do you think of the idea?
You say it can pull up to 4 lbs.. I saw your video on how to tell how much your engine can pull, but can you make a video showing how much 4 lbs of freight cars would be in the model railroad world?
