Intermountain T4 Gevos?

[ryan_wilkerson]

Scaletrains and now Intermountain?
https://www.intermountain-railway.com/n/nloco/nlocet44ac.htm

[ljudice]

oh noes!!!!


https://www.intermountain-railway.com/currentflyers.html


ScaleTrains is doing two versions on CSX at least, so that is one differentiator...

[ryan_wilkerson]

It says "All new tooling and chassis". I wonder if they collaborated with FVM for the mechanism? If so, I think that's a positive.
The "slide-in" decoder is interesting...I'd like to know more details about it.

[RBrodzinsky]

Probably the same board used in the SD40-2s (since it "slides in" to the frame)

[learmoia]

Now we just need Kato and BLI to jump in and we can have a party!

~Ian

[Mark5]

These along with the ScaleTrains ET44ACs (etc) - N scale is getting some modern GE love!   

[jdcolombo]

OK.  So I need one of these about as much as I need a trip to Mars.

But I'm desperately curious as to how IM is going to do the speaker and what speaker they will use.  Almost certainly will be a fuel-tank mount; but the fuel tanks in these things are enormous, so a 9x16mm speaker would be possible.  The question is whether they try to do a sealed enclosure with the speaker offset to one side, to take advantage of the fuel tank length.  Then they could use some kind of phosphor-bronze contacts that slip through a slit in the speaker enclosure, but are sealed with some kind of cement (CA).  The speaker would have to be hand assembled to the enclosure, but it wouldn't take long if the p-b contact strips were already soldered to the speaker.  Put a thin bead of CA around the speaker, slip the contact strips through two pre-made slits in the bottom of the enclosure, then slip the speaker in the enclosure.  The enclosure could have two small posts to regulate the depth of where the speaker ends up.  Finish things off with some thin CA on the slits, and voila: a sealed enclosure with external contacts that would then butt up against speaker contacts that wrap around the motor, like the SD40-2.  Probably wouldn't take more than one minute to put one together like this. 

Sigh . . . So I'll probably end up with a CN unit, since I live about a half-mile from the CN/IC main line.

John C.

[ednadolski]

"finely molded parts" -- sounds like cast-on grabirons....   Definitely a non-starter for me.

Ed

[sundowner]

Wow more expensive than Scale trains and two of the UP number are duplicates.

[jpwisc]

It will be fun to do a side by side comparison when the Intermountains arrive in 2020.

[wcfn100]

Wow more expensive than Scale trains and two of the UP number are duplicates.

Same price.

Jason

[sirenwerks]

I get the feeling N scale will be run into the ground by all of this redundancy. It's not like they're covered wagons, which were owned by lots and lots of railroads.

[mu26aeh]

Same price.

Jason

Yep, given you're not going to get any further discount anywhere on the ScaleTrains version, with a $259 retail price, the street version will be comparable to the $200-210 range when the IM are released.  A little too modern for me, but if I would get one, it would be Intermountain thru my dealer.

[wcfn100]

"finely molded parts" -- sounds like cast-on grabirons....   Definitely a non-starter for me.

Ed

In an e-mail just put out by IM, these were designed by FVM, IM is just bringing them to market.  Unless IM redesigned them, they'll probably have the dimples.


Jason

[RSWController]

Would of preferred Paducah rebuilds but I guess this is good for the modern guys.