Bill There's a thread on this over at nscale.net and one of the posters has his MP15. He really seems to like the running characteristics. Big Snooze
Also here: http://forum.atlasrr.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=17965 I can't believe it. It's 2005 and they put out this. Maybe back 15yrs it would have been acceptable, but not now. Can you believe it.......TRUCK MOUNTED COUPLERS!!!!!!! I hope Atlas does better.
Its just retro, that's all. Seriously, they did that with their new PA1 - still has the rotating pilot of the 30 year old Kato model and still has the nose too long and tapered - they just used the existing shell. I picked one up anyway just because neither Kato or LifeLike offers their PA1 in the Rio Grande "ski train" scheme. The new split-frame mechanism is great though. So the PA1 is a mixed bag and it looks like the MP15 is as well. Prices are lower than the competition, so I gues one gives up something for the lower prices. Some modelers will be happy with the Con Cor model and others will want to wait for the Atlas. I'm happy that there are alternatives out there. Big Snooze
George .. even Life Like has gotten their little switchers to work with body mounted couplers. Its not too much to expect Con-Cor to do the same. They went to a lot of trouble to put a flywheel mechanism into this thing, why not go the next logical step. Could it be that the big hole in the pilot is that these things have been tooled up in the warehouse for 20 years. Many of us snip off the truck mounted couplers on our MT and Atlas cars, and body mount them .. at least those two companies give us the option of doing the body mount .. Con-Cor does not. I can't speak for the Kato F3, its not my era ..
It is really not that glaring. The hole is fairly small all things considered. I just want to get my layout back up so I can test it.
