Was previously posted back a couple pages, but yea, preproduction photos. KatoUSA did tweet today 4 new artwork pictures. Joe Jordan, Jim Adams, Kenefick, and the Power Car. First look-painting diagrams for the new tooling UP Power car and Business car! Check out the final printing diagrams for our upcoming N UP Water Tender Jim Adams Joe Jordan Power Car 207 Kenefick Willie James Promontory Columbine (still showing the wrong truck though (ISH); Paul told me himself they would be OSH though) Portland Rose (Also showing wrong trucks.) Chris
Man, I do love me some Hobby Search. I may have ordered my FEF from Chuck's, but I get a lot of stuff from HS. Great service!
The different colored tires look like they are showing different finishes. The gold are probably bare brass, then blackened and lastly white painted tires. It doesn't look like even Kato was able to replicate the hollow axles of the prototype.
Don't see any provisions for a speaker in the tender, but seems like there is space perhaps for one to be placed/built. With the preproduction photos of Kenefick and the power car on twitter, hopefully not too long before we get photos of the water bottles hopefully. Chris
I'm surprised there is not a working back up light in the tender seeing it's not short of room, but then the GS4 didn't have one either.
I received the email from Kato with a video of the pre-production model of the FEF. Kelley... are you the narrator of those videos? The narrator disassembled the engine and tender as you've shown above. It seems to be fairly easy to get into the model for DCC install or other servicing. It looks really nice... even though the narrator said that there are many add-on details which were not yet added to the pre-production model. This model should be very well received... I hope it runs as well as it did on that video.
Here's a link to the YouTube video from Kato's channel: http://youtu.be/FBEeNdMQJFs Man, that is one sweet loco!
Maybe Kelley can answer this. In the video, they say that you can add lights to the water tenders with the addon PCB. Will they have a decoder to show when they are in reverse and light? How will that work. I plan putting light kits in both tenders, in case I run one or the other alone, but how will the lights work with them? Chris
The prototype water bottles have lights on both ends. Should be interesting to see what the DCC functions for the lights will be. I would imagine "consisting" with the locomotive will be involved.
That's all well and good if you want to run the loco in excursion service with the extra tenders but not in regular service. I'm guessing the water tenders will use Kato's drop in FL12 decoder as has every observation car they have made since the Super Chief.
And this my intent is excursion service. I don't have lights any of my cars (Daylight, CoLA, and misc UP), mainly because of non-tinted windows and that white light is way too bright to me. I've never messed with the FL12 decoder, so I wasn't sure if that would be the case or not, heck, only the flyer listed the item number, description and price for them, so its pretty vague of how it was going to be done. Wonder why its not on the FEF/Excursion page. Chris
Silly question - anyone see what the dimensions (length) of the UP #844 with Tender and two water bottle cars are. I see that Kato suggests a minimum radius of 12 3/8" but what is the length of the engine/tender/ two water cars? Thank you
Like I say I'm only guessing they will use the FL12, I still haven't come across any official Kato documentation that they can be used in observation cars even though every passenger train released since the Super Chief uses them. It's just that, being familiar with Kato's Japanese passenger trains, I knew what the lift up hatch on the bottom of the observation car was for.