Kato E8 Rock Island

[Point353]

My hope is that this is just an indication that Kato is re-tooling the E8 (it has been around for 25 (?) years now) for a passenger train release next year.  Had a few shells and chassis sitting around in Japan from the last production run, and somebody in Schaumburg had a bright idea, and they shipped them over from the factory to a custom painter.

An etailer recently posted that Kato will be releasing another run of the UP COLA passenger train set along with matching E unit locos in early 2022, so that production run is likely to be the source for the shells and chassis for this custom decorated unit.

[CBQ Fan]

Maybe they will release Milwaukee Road E units thi time.

[CBQ Fan]

My unit arrived today!  Took it for a couple of laps around the layout. It looks great to me. Definitely fun to pull some Q headend equipment, Rock Island coaches/sleepers and a Q observation. My own Zephyr Rocket.

[spookshow]

Not a peep out of Kato about mine, but I ordered the DCC-Sound version so maybe that's in the next wave?

-Mark

[CBQ Fan]

For their regular run products Kato usually seems to have a delay on the DCC & sound upgrades.

[peteski]

For their regular run products Kato usually seems to have a delay on the DCC & sound upgrades.

Makes sense since they receive shipment of only DC locos from Japan.  Those get shipped to U.S. distributors or vendors, and at the same time to the DCC installer who has to custom-install all those DCC decoders and/or speakers.  Installations take some time.