Looks like Walther's Life/Like has been busy. First the NE caboose (blech! comes in a new box!) Then the SW1200 is DCC ready. Now the GP20. Just listed on an etailer's site. The one added feature is...... --[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][SIZE=-1]Drop-in DCC Conversion-Ready w/Clip-Fit Circuit Board [/SIZE][/FONT] The price is 99/~75 Is that a price increase or about what they were?
The DCC ready GP 20's were announced a couple months ago. The $99.98 price is the lower than the $119.98 of the last run about a 2 years ago. These are due in April. They suposedly use the same decoder as the Kato SD80/90, RS2, RSC2 and Walthers GP38-2, GP18, RS-2.
Don't think that decoder will work. The GP20 is low nose, and I have tried using one of my DCC GP18 Chassis under a GP20 shell and it's a no-go due to decoder lenght. Also, that decoder does not fit the Walther's GP38. There is no drop-in for that engine.
If you look in the loco section of the latest Walther's catalog (page 25), they say that the GP-20's will be discontinued once they're sold out (as will be the RS-2's). As far as DCC goes, maybe Walthers doesn't understand the concept of a plug and play decoder in a N scale loco?
The GP18 and the RS2 are PNP. The GP38 looks like it was intended to be, but they didn't finish the job.
About the new run of SW's they say "Limited Edition -- One Time Run of These Roadnumbers!" I'm hoping this is what they mean about the GP20 and that more runs will be done in the future but in different road numbers. No different to the way everyone else does things.
Maybe the decoder model is a typo? DN163A2 would make a heck of a lot more sense. EDIT: I take it back. Looked on Spookshow's site and the GP18 clearly had a Kato style decoder. Guess Walthers is unclear on the concept.
Prior to the announcement of the DCC re-release, I had tried installing a Walthers GP18 DCC mechanism under on of my GP20s and found that it wouldn’t fit due to decoder length (GP20 being a low nose). When this announcement came out, I contacted Digitrax and TCS to see if they were working on a decoder in hopes that I could just convert a couple of my spare GP18 mechs to use with my current GP20. Neither manufacturer was aware of an impending release, and neither had a decoder in the works. This would seem to be a flaw in Walther’s business model. Why announce a DCC ready model if you don’t bring the major manufacturers on board to support it? This is probably why the GP38 ended up the way it did. It would seem to be a good idea to send pre-production samples to the DCC shops so that they can have product available upon release.
Anyone remember the 0-8-0 with the 8 pin socket in the tender but you couldn't fit the tender shell back on with a decoder plugged in? I sometimes don't think Walthers know what they are getting themselves until it arrives.
