Dave, those look great. I remember seeing one like photo #2 on the Indiana Southern (now a G&W company) still in "strips" scheme. These seem to show up in a lot of places now days. I wonder if CSX will start selling off their Pan Am units and they will start showing up as lease and shortline locomotives. Ralph
Just cracked mine open today. Really nice. Not going to lie, I’m incredibly disappointed that they don’t have a plow. No idea why they would do that. And the truck side frames are incorrect. But! Considering I’ve been waiting 30 years for a ready to run GP40-2w I can let it slide. That being said, I did reach out to Atlas about it and it seems they have gotten the message. I won’t hold my breath, but the plow and trucks may be getting rectified.
Has anyone taken off the shell on one of these yet? I need to fix a stray contact wire. Can I assume it's the same as other atlas models? Thanks
Something I have learned the hard way is to pull the handrails loose from the cab because sometimes the walkway will seperate from the rest of the shell and the handrails will break right behind the cab. I have had this happen on an Atlas GP38-2 and a FVM GP60. These were on tight fitting shells, the ones that came off much eaiser were never a problem. As far as the contact wires that go from the trucks to the frame, on two of the new type of wired locomotives I have had to spread the contacts that enter into the holes in the frame because they were not making good enough contact. You may want to check out Spookshows website because he has a good review along photos and helpful tips on how to disassemble these. It's spookshow.net Ralph
A little, on the inside of the cab there was a little paint/glue on the fiber optic end I cleaned off...helped a little...
Does anyone know if any of the paint schemes have been done with dynamic brakes, or if Atlas has any plans to do dynamic brakes for the GP40-2W?
Has anyone had any success with improving the ditch lights in the meantime? On my loco one is practically completely dark
I've noticed that if there is slight mis-alignment of the light piping in the shell going to the LEDs on the decoder board that can affect brightness. So first check that the shell is on properly as sometimes the get snagged on a part of the chassis and don't seat fully. Sometimes also they are slightly off in assembly and am not confident that any amount of correction by the end user will yield worthwhile results. The 2 that I have perform at a bare minimum for my liking and I'd considered running my own pre-wired pico LEDs to the ditch light housings.
I bought an Atlas 9618 CN GP40-2W- my grandfathers and an uncle worked for CN for decades. I put in an ESU decoder, hard wired the motor and sound contacts to avoid the curved bronze sliders (greater reliability). Works great, and remarkably loud after I reloaded the sound file and made some adjustments in the ESU Programmer files. The shell pops off with the usual "drop the end gently onto a ledge (I use a piece of pine). First one end, then the other, and it slides out intact.