I wonder how things are going on the Atlas S2 project? Anyone heard? I guess it has been a year or more since we talked about it here.
I believe they had running undecorated samples at the last show they were at. The sound was reportedly very impressive for the size.
I didn't believe it's been a whole year until I looked at the last post. Time flies when you're having fun, or waiting for N scale locomotives to be released.
As noted by a few others already, it is interesting that this model has a die cast long hood. Years ago the Arnold S2 model also had a die cast long hood. While it was not a great mechanism, it was one of the first American prototype N scale models available with a DCC decoder which was in the cab. Brad My blogs: http://www.n-scale-dcc.blogspot.com/ http://www.palisadecanyonrr.blogspot.com/ http://www.tokyo-in-nscale.blogspot.com/
Any word on when to expect these jems? I didn't see them list on the shipping link on the Atlas site. Sent from my VS840 4G using Tapatalk
Paul, my apologies if I made it sound real, couldn't see how to get a smiley on with what I said, I for one am anxious to get a hold of one, just hope the Aussie dollar holds up to make it financially viable, I have a couple of the Arnold ones, great for grinding coffee and they have a natural sound system, albeit a bit daunting.
Guys, please don't start bashing Atlas about these loco's arrival. Paul has already said, they are working/tweaking them, to get all the bugs out. Good things don't come easy. I'm sure they will be worth the wait. Happy Holidays, now get those passengers home in time! Joe D
ESU is working on finishing up the sound board. It was a little trickier than that had first thought. Hopefully we'll get these shipped in the first quarter of 2014, but Chinese New Year may put a slight delay in those plans.
Okay that explains the delay in the DCC/ESU "Gold" ones - if the sound board is the only problem why the delay in the Standard non-DCC "Silver" ones????
And fingers crossed that ESU eventually makes the soundboard available as a separate item. Hopefully it's smaller than the current Select Micro decoder. Bob
I think it is highly un-likely. I would doubt that DC and DCC units are ever made in the same run. Surely there will be two different production lines or one production line with two different runs scheduled and no reason the runs have to be one right after the other. No way would it be left up to the people sitting at a single converyor belt to decide which locos get the sound board and which gets the DC board..... I am also fairly sure Atlas has split runs between DC and DCC before - shipping DC units on time and delaying DCC units for a later time because boards were not ready.
I would think that up to the point that you drop in the decoder, the DCC model and the non-DCC model could be on the same run. I would think this would so that the non-DCC model could have a decoder added later in life. And so they could ship the non-DCC units if they start the run before the decoders are ready.
Since this is the first run of the model, nothing gets produced in bulk until we are sure that everything is ready to assemble and have it operate properly. Pretty much everything that is in a DCC model is in a DC model, and all of the decoration, drive line assembly, etc. is better to do in one production. While we have split shipments of items before, we don't like to do it is less efficient for the factory (more cost) and it makes it harder on the rest of the supply chain, with multiple shipments, questions as to where the other half of the product is, dealers wanting to make sure they aren't shorted, etc.
I'm very pleased Atlas is working with ESU for the sound version. Their ALCO 539T sound samples sound terrific. I hope that you all have taken care to engineer a good speaker system, including a proper sealed enclosure, since the quality of the sound ultimately is all about the speaker. And there are some terrific 8mm x 12mm and 9mm x 16mm cell phone speakers that probably would work in the space available. I've linked these before in other threads, but I'll do it again just to emphasize what can be accomplished with one of the cell-phone type speakers in a modest sealed enclosure and ESU LokSound electronics: Atlas RS-11, ESU LokSound (ALCO 251B V-16 sound file), Knowles Fox (9mm x 16mm) speaker in a 6mm-high sealed enclosure made from .020 styrene: [video=youtube_share;PvTZPzdpOwo]http://youtu.be/PvTZPzdpOwo[/video] Atlas GP7, ESU LokSound (EMD 567 V-16 non-turbo sound file), Knowles Fox speaker in the same enclosure (ignore the cat meowing in the background; not part of ESU's sound file ): [video=youtube_share;mE9y38mulDQ]http://youtu.be/mE9y38mulDQ[/video] There's no reason the S2 can't sound as good as either of these two projects, which use off-the-shelf components shoehorned into the available space. If the manufacturers take it seriously (particularly the speaker selection/enclosure part of it), N scale sound can be terrific! John C.
Good to see Paul Graf on TB letting us know what is going on, most manufacturers just keep putting back the release date without explanation, another one starting with 'A' was a big offender with the sound equipped FP45's. I don't mind a wait if I know why.
