New Arrivals On The Railroad

Welcome followers to the Atlantic Pacific Railroad and my blog!

While it's usually a slow time of the year for model railroading, many of the dealers have been offering specials. While I wasn't looking for anything special, one engine caught my eye.

Bachmann came out with an SD40-2 in CSX YN3b road #8905. There's a unique difference in this road number compared to the other SD40-2 engines is this engine, as well as 5 others (according to rrpicturearchives.net) show them as former Norfolk Southern (NS) engines. While they all have CSX reporting marks, they remained in a black paint...

Modeltrainstuff.com had a special on all Bachmann 10% off. I was watching this engine at trainworld.com, but never pulled the trigger. Modeltrainstuff had it $10 cheaper, plus the 10% off. If you buy $100 worth of trains, you do get free shipping. We placed the order for the engine...

Some background on the SD40-2 according to Wikipedia:

The EMD SD40-2 is a 3,000-horsepower (2,200 kW) C-C road switcher diesel-electric locomotive built by EMD from 1972 to 1989.

The SD40-2 was introduced in January 1972 as part of EMD's Dash 2 series, competing against the GE U30C and the ALCO Century 630. Although higher-horsepower locomotives were available, including EMD's own SD45-2, the reliability and versatility of the 3,000-horsepower (2,200 kW) SD40-2 made it one of the best-selling models in EMD's history, edged only by the GP9, and the standard of the industry for several decades after its introduction. The SD40-2 was an improvement over the SD40, with modular electronic control systems similar to those of the experimental DDA40X.

Peak production of the SD40-2 was in the mid-1970s. Sales of the SD40-2 began to diminish after 1981 due to the oil crisis, increased competition from GE's Dash-7 series and the introduction of the EMD SD50, which was available concurrently to late SD40-2 production. The last SD40-2 delivered to a United States railroad was built in July 1984, with production continuing for railroads in Canada until 1988, Mexico until February 1986, and Brazil until October 1989. As of 2013, nearly all built still remain in service.

Here's a photo from rrpicturearchives.net of the engine...

The Bachmann engine, for the money looks great and runs well. They do need a break-in period and we'll let it run around the layout for a while to get broken in and run smoothly. Here's the model adjacent to Rock Ridge freight yard. It's DCC equipped, so we took it to the program track on the layout, and programmed it to road #8905 in about a minute...

 

I was still a little short to get the free shipping, so we found 3 Bachmann 100 Ton 3 Bay hoppers on sale. Two in CR and the other in CSX. 

All of these cars, as well as the engine will need Kadee couplers. The Bachmann hoppers, while they include weights to add in, are still a little light, so we'll add some weight to it this weekend. 

The hoppers will be added to the yard for operating sessions. However, they will be moved out of the way during our virtual op sessions...

That's all for now! Thanks for reading!