Perhaps no "corporate" experience from your outline, but personal experience gained at other manufacturers is another thing altogether. Again, like others have mentioned, there is nothing wrong about personal bias within a private company. Life is too short to be a hater. Accept it and move on. Which has absolutely no proven correlation to model railroaders, consumers or scale preference.
Well iirc Bachman did a release of the SD40-2 many moons ago, but it wasn't a great runner. Honestly, I'm going to hold off until these are reviewed before I reserve mine. Honestly I would buy an SD40-2 from EVERY manufacturer who wanted to release one. I'll take mine in NS please.
Bachmann certainly did make one. It was the first N loco I bought, and I would never make that mistake again.
Of the very first run, many actually ran fairly well. But the paint didn't look good on some, and if I recall correctly, the shell was somewhat shorter than prototype. Weren't the handrails also oversized?
Ken, having painted the one I had (guess why?) I can't comment on the quality of that. I seem to recall that you are correct about the handrails (although to varying degrees I suppose that could be true of any N scale loco that doesn't use wire for the handrails?). I don't know much about differences between batches, I just remember mine stuttering like crazy.
Mike- Yours was from the very first run, with the horribly oversized flasher sticking through cab roof?
I am a big fan of the SD40-2 from a modelers perspective. All the Kato units I have seem to be the most reliable units, resembling the prototype performance. Even the IM Tunnel motors units are also really good runners. I can easily see getting more ATSF and others provided they are not re-runs of existing numbers in my inventory. You can never have too many SD40's!
Ken, you're probably right, but as it's been close to 20 years since I pitched that dog, I just don't remember whether or not it had a flasher. David, you could always renumber them (ducks quickly). Price determining, I may et at least one, knowing in advance I'd have to paint it...
The original run sometime in the 80's wasn't too bad for Bachmann for the time and actually had correct Santa Fe detailing. IIRC the later run in the 90's was so bad one hobby shop here in Brisbane sent them all back to Bachmann's local distributor because no one would buy them.
Does anybody know what phase these units are? I'm hoping for an earlier production phase, but mid or late will work.
From the drawings in the ad, looks to be mid production units with 88" nose and brake wheel. Why couldn't they do a mid production with an 88" nose and ratchet brake...I could use those. Well more of those.
IM just sent an email out...here's the link to the SD40-2 http://www.ircmodelersclub.com/reservationflyers/RF0214NSD40-2s.htm
I got that ad too, and HOLY CRAP talk about pricey. The Kato, which they did in some of the same paint schemes, was only $118 for DC and $158 with DCC. Kato just released the ATSF, Pan Am, and UP in the exact same body styles. The BN is an early, which they haven't done in for a while. Maybe this will push Kato to do them more often...maybe, just maybe. And now looks they are doing mid-productions and early.
I sure hope for some they do lates as well and HIGH HOODS!! What I really want to know is if they will have ditchlights???
Kato has already got the return on investment with the tooling. IM has all new tooling which means the costs will be slightly higher. As for the decoder version, they are putting in much better decoders than Kato uses. The sound units are also a bit high as well, but that may be due to the fact that this is also the first pass with sound in the chassis. Perhaps it is because they have separate tooling for the sound units. In any event, the MSRP is not what they will sell for, most the suppliers will have them discounted somewhat.
