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Okay, here is my review so far of the SP version. I wish the frustrations weren't so major, but I'm going to try to appreciate the good stuff.- You have to unsolder the trucks to fully disassemble the model. Everything else can be disassembled without a soldering iron, why do this? It's anti-modeler. FFS. - when I bought an Atlas locomotive I really didn't think I was buying a BLI locomotive. But oh well. At least it doesn't come with a BLI decoder.
Now that it appears settled that this has a Next18 interface, Here’s my next question. If I put a different brand decoder with a Next18 interface in this loco, will all the contacts still line up to the correct outputs? Is there a standard for this? Otherwise, couldn’t the motor outputs end up on a light circuit, etc?
There is a European standard - NEM662 which is a standard layout for the pins of a Next18 I think that technically the NMRA hasn't adopted it yet, but it's pretty set due to the NEM standard.
Ok, so I have one question that I've been dreading asking... has anyone checked the hood width? Is it right?
Okay, here is my review so far of the SP version. I wish the frustrations weren't so major, but I'm going to try to appreciate the good stuff.Here's the good stuff:-Accurate light placement (if not wiring, we'll get to that)-Accurate L-Window-Prototypical front and rear plows-The lights have great luminosity for each feature (except the inside-the-cab light). Although I complained about the LED color above, the placement behind the light tubes is excellent and I appreciate this because it's something that a lot of N scale locomotives have failed at.- No light leaks! Even between the front numberboard and upper headlights (although I'm trepidatious about getting that part back together properly now that I've take it apart, see below.) - Separate numberboard lighting. Okay here's the cons:- Biggest one for SP fans is that the nose light (headlight!) and upper headlight (gyralight!) are wired together. It really sucks to require surgery to fix this, and it could have been avoided. (Just wire them together on the DC plug board, and make them separate functions on the decoder.) And the ideal surgery to fix it - wiring it to an unused decoder function - appears to be not worth the time to figure out. What I'm likely to end up doing is sacrificing the unnecessary and too bright inside-the-cab lighting and wiring that to the upper headlight. Fortunately this can be done on the little circuit board that goes in the top of the cab and contains the upper headlight, numberboard and cab lighting LEDs. It will be tricky, though, to get that board back in now that I've taken it out.- You have to unsolder the trucks to fully disassemble the model. Everything else can be disassembled without a soldering iron, why do this? It's anti-modeler. FFS. - when I bought an Atlas locomotive I really didn't think I was buying a BLI locomotive. But oh well. At least it doesn't come with a BLI decoder.Incidentally if you are in JMRI and want to disable the whole start delay thing it's called 'Engine RPM Interlock' and you can disable it. I also enabled Autostart so I can immediately tell if the engine is working when the track has power. And for SP fans, you can change the horn to Nathan P3 (although it's not as good as the LokSound version, but maybe it will be better after covering over the hole in the bottom of the fuel tank and tweaking the equalizer.) I can try to track down CVs if anyone needs them.
They wired the nose light and cab light together?? Good Lord, who makes these decisions???
I would say Chinese designers who know nothing (or maybe very little) about various American railroads or how the lighting was utilized.
Yeah but it's Atlas' job to ask for this when they commission the models. It would have been so easy.
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Topic: Atlas SD45's shipping (Read 10441 times)
