Just received my SD70Ms today in the mail. One is a regular UP and the other is the Flag unit! I must say that the paint and detail are great, but I am really sorely disappointed with the performance! Very slow (like a proto SD60) with the regular one grinding in the front trucks on corners! They run nothing like the early ATSF/BNSF versions---wonderful perfomance curve. Are they all like this or I have I managed to get two rotten apples somehow? Interested in any feedback. Thanks.
I think you may have gotten two rotten apples. I have two of the 70ms myself, one a reg UP unit and the other a SP re-number. The sp was made in 1998 and the other in 2002. The reg UP runs like a dream, but on the other hand the sp unit runs like a reg athearn unit baaaaad. Anyways notice the date. I think they updated the drive somewhere in between 98 and 02. I may just gotten unlucky i dunno. And about the proto sd60 what did you mean by slow. My 60 can pull every coal car on my layout !!!! Oh and when are the 60Ms gonna be released????!!!! first it was June then it was end of June, and now end of August jeeze. When are they actually gonna come out and why the delay? [ 28. August 2002, 00:59: Message edited by: Jake ]
You did just get a coupler of bad apples. I had the same problem with some of the early undec 70Ms and I ended up sending both back to the distributor for replacement. I later got a pair of SP SD70Ms, which ran great, when they stayed on the track. Appearently these units have the low-profile flanges and they don't stay on the track worth a damn.
Before sending 'em back, look under the hood & check the chassis, power drive, etc. Have you got anything binding up anywhere? Any burrs that need to be smoothed out? Most of the Athearns I got I took home & checked 'em over for any problems I missed at the hobby shop (And yes, I test-run my engines before buying, unless it's an online purchase). If you've checked both of them, straightened out any problems, and you STILL can't get 'em to run well, then bad-order 'em & ship 'em back. As much as we'd like to have everything delivered to us 100% problem-free, sometimes this happens. If it's a little thing you can fix, you're in luck. Hopefully, you DID just get a couple of lemons- my wife wants me to get a "flagged" SD70M (and I'm doing N scale, for crying out loud) to run with my HO rolling stock I still have. If they're all lemons, I may save a chunk of cash- if not, I'll order. Let us know what happens.
It appears that they justed needed a longer break in period. Still a bit slower than the first runs though. The UP standard paint has a small grinding sound in the front trucks when going through a 22 in curve that I can't find. If I can't take care of it myself it will go back for a replacement. The FLAG unit is running pretty good now. Thanks for the replies.
You are correct about the slowness. I returned mine for the very same reason. Not being DCC it was always getting rear-ended. MR Oct 2000 review"The maximum speed with no trailing cars was just over 50 scale MPH".
That's always been an issue with Proto units. On the one hand it's nice that they run at prototypical speeds, but on the other hand nothing else does. My personal remedy to this is to watch the power consists I put together and also to get certain road names from certain manufacturers. For example, nearly all my SP&S power is Atlas, Most of my GN is Proto, all my Milwaukee Rd is Kato, etc. There are of course exceptions ( An ABBA set of Proto FAs in SP&S, custom painted and my 3 unit set of Atlas GN U33Cs) but they tend to run as homogenus sets so it's not an issue. The "Right" answer to this in my mind is to install decoders in all units and program them to a standard speed table, but as you can imagine that can be an expensive undertaking. Just my thoughts
