New Trains mag just came in and on page 7 is a full page color photo of the 9911 pulling the Nebraska Zephyr on Sept. 23, 2012. Nice shot of the top for details to compare to the Kato version.
The NCL used to be at the top of my wish list, only because I wouldn't have dreamed that Kato would make an E5. Now that this is a done deal, the NCL is back on top of the wish list. Maybe next year.....
Well Katos excuse for not doing a NCL was they couldn't find the correct color and knew if they didn't get the color right that they would never hear the end of it. I guess they found out the hard way after the CoLA fiasco. Well now that the NPRHA has put out the "official" color drift cards that excuse is no longer valid for Kato.
I had an A&B unit with a mix of the 4 car sets. Sold off the 4 car sets bought the COLA and another B unit and had some cash left over if I recall correctly. I am very happy with it. I looked at WOT Wabash (UP colors) and felt it was very off and the MT colors are also very different. Oh well.
I was just thinking, maybe Kato will do a shell with the "as received at IRM" dented front coupler door.
They would also have to paint the stripes a faded red. And you thought the purists were screaming already. Even beat up, it was still a nice looking locomotive. The Q really ran them into the dirt before they got rid of them. They found out that they did not make good freight locomotives lugging drags along the front range in Colorado. After they burned most of the traction motors up they traded them in to EMD for some new Geeps.
I, for one, can suspend any disbelief necessary for a Kato E5. I'l compare it with my Hallmark brass E5 when mine arrives. BTW, that's how she looked in 1974 when I first saw her. The EL put freight gearing in their E8s and the crews loved the ride but I don't think they had to face the grades that the CB&Q E5s did on the Joint Line. Since Silver Pilot was on the Texas Zephyr assignment, I don't know that it suffered the same fate as her sisters lugging freight. I do know IRM got their E5 from EMD and not the CB&Q (or affiliates).
[video=youtube;S3f21ItEZvU]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3f21ItEZvU[/video] Figure you CB&Q fans will like this. Folks going for the sound may have some fun getting this horn sound.
The nose is too long on the loco in that video, John... and, if you look closely (I froze the frame and photoshopped various angles of manufacturers' drawings and overlayed them onto freeze-frame shots of that restored loco speeding by), you can see that the restoration crew missed the subtle curve under the windshield 6 inches on either side of the front triangular cab window... oh...and the paint is wrong... what a fiasco! Tongue-in-cheek-ly, Bruce
Was wondering if some of the CB&Q folks have a reasonably accurate date for when the E-5s lost thier truck skirts. Trying to make up my mind whether I want the set with skirts or just go for a single A without skirts.
I don't have an exact date but I'm guessing early as the maintenance folks just LOVED taking them off for service. Let me check my resources and see if I can pin down a date range.
Found the build dates to be during 1940-41 so it could fit in my era. But wondering at about what point in time the skirts came off.
Only the earliest photos have the skirts, so I'm guessing they were gone in two or three years. I've even seen at least one photo with one truck skirted and the other without, so there is likely some variability. Hopefully Kato will offer the sideframes as a separate part so that we can easily swap them. Of course what we really need is a matching B unit. That youtube video is probably better than any ad copy Kato could come up with, so if enough of those watching it decide to vote with their wallets, we might have a winner with the B. Anybody receive their units yet?
Almost certainly the skirts were gone by the end of the War. I don't recall seeing them on pictures of the E5 that got racked up on the Exposition Flyer in Naperville in 1946 but that may be because I can't see the trucks. I haven't had a chance to check my resources. Also, there should be some video floating around of the Nebraska Zephyr fantrip from Chicago to Galesburg last month.
