This past weekend I went to the London festival of railway modeling. One of the traders had some Walthers SD70ACE so I decided to try one as the price was a lot lower than the Athearn version. I noticed they had very little detail, no grab irons no hoses on the pilots and nothing on the cab roof. Also on the first one I examined the rear hand rails were pinched in the packaging and badly distorted. I chose a no soundone with good hand rails and took it home. I use DCC and on reading the instructions there was a choice of 8 or 9 pin sockets. However when I came to remove the body I hit a snag. Walthers instrutions say to remove the shell:
"1. Remove te front coupler box (refer to the explodedview diagram below)
2.Hold the chassis in one hand and pull the body straight up. If it sticks, gently rock the body to loosen it."
I tried this and it would not budge and all I managed to do was damage the horn. Closer examination of the underside revealed to small screws hidden by the trucks close to the fuel tank. Once these screws were removed the body popped right off. The decoder installation was the very simple.
The next frustration was when I came to install the coupler boxes ( they come separate) the rear coupler was no problem but the front one would not fit in the slot in the pilot. During my attempts to force it in I dislodged one of the ditchlight housings and it disappeared into the carpet never to be seen again ( they are not glued on). In the end I found a Kaydee coupler box would fit fine.
I know this is a low price model however surely the instructions should be right and important parts should fit.
Those two screws are very hard to get to as well with a screwdriver as the trucks have to be swiveled just a certain way. It helps to have a good magnetized screwdriver to put them back in.
As far as the couplers it is a rare Walters proto loco that I don’t have to file at least one coupler pocket to get the box to slide through the square pilot hole.
If I understand the heritage and re-naming of so many model product lines these days, I believe the “Mainline” series is the former Life-Like Proto 1000 line of more economical offerings. When Life-Like introduced it they claimed that the drives and mechanicals were [nearly] identical to the Proto 2000 with fewer added details.
The RDC, C-Liners, Eriebuilts, DL109 and others were part of that line that Walthers continued under the Mainline moniker.
Similar to your situation, just yesterday I was trying to remove the shell of the L-L Alco FA-1 and remembered that I had to remove the plastic fuel tank which was glued on to access the four screws. I nearly destroyed it in trying to pry it off!
I think it is seriously poor planning when a mfr. does not make the shell easy to remove, even if the problem is simply an ommission in the instructions. With the level of detail that some companies offer it is a major challenge just to pick a locomotive up without damaging it, let alone trying to take it apart. I have a fleet of P2K switchers and very few of the tabs that hold the shells on are still intact.[banghead] Of course, I’m a bit ham fisted but the mfr.s should be taking that into account instead of ignoring it.
Strange that they didn’t mention the screws. Walthers and Life-Like are usually better than that (or so I thought). I find screws to be prefereable though. Some of those latch systems are extremely tedious to release, or they’re so loose they don’t even hold the shell to the chassis (like my Genesis SD75M, which drops its chassis if I lift by the shell).
Sorry about your experience with walthers, I have heard it can be frustrating to lift the shell off.
NEVER force anything loose, you will end up causing more damage to the small detail parts on the locomotive shell.
I’m in a railroad club, and every other month our president has a DCC Camp at his shop-members bring thier cars and locomotives to get tuned up or to get decoders installed.
You would think Walthers should offer better customer service.
I purchased two NS units…straight DC. I have test run them and they run fine. I must admit I realized the low level of detail and figured I can add the air hoses, grab irons, etc,etc… However my enthusiasm has waned a bit and the locomotive set remain on the shelf In the boxes. Just offering something to think about before spending $200. I also have a pair of NS ES44ac locomotives on backorder,delivery due around Christmas. I may revisit that order as the level of detail would be the same. Again…something to think about before spending hard earned money only to realize…do I really want to do all this detail work.
I purchased one of these models recently and struggled to remove the bodyshell. Besides the coupler boxes and the 2 screws near the fuel tank there are 2 screws at the rear either side of the rear coupler mount that also need to be removed before the shell will come off.
The question I have is how do you remove the cab so as to access the cab interior if you want to add a couple of crew members?
I recently got one of these for my Florida East Coast fleet. Its DC only. For a few days I noticed some hesitation when crossing from one block to another. Today, I removed it from the layout and found out that the rear truck is not picking up eletricity whatsoever.
I’m in the process of opening the thing to figure out what’s going on.
I was given 7 of these locomotives two years ago for Christmas, had to fix something on everyone of them right out of the box. Now to your problem…I had one that was running erratic requiring complete disassembly. I found the wipers in the truck assembly needed “reformed” to contact the actual wheel. I was unable to get one wiper formed properly, so I have a 5 axle pickup instead of six. I was surprised to find the truck assembly hand packed full of grease…comparable to the front wheel bearings on an 80 Chevy pickup. The wiring and wipers are so cheap and flimsy be careful or they will break. I metered out continuity between wheel and PC board. That’s how I found the problem. Since the whole truck is dead, I would check to see if the wire to the PC board is open or the clip connection on the PC board is bad. The cheap wiring coupled with the routing through the weight and chassis is a recipe for problems. Again…be very careful taking this apart as the parts are of low quality and easily broken. I cleaned out a large amount of the hand packed grease in the truck assembly. Good luck with the repair attempt.
That’s just another of the reasons I have fitted LED lighting to each of my P2K GP7s - getting then apart is easy enough, but putting them back together is a serious paion, the cut level always interfers witht he couple box, and there is such little room to work that about the only thing I can use to pry up on the cut lever to get the coupler to slip under and seat is a knife blade.
I’d have to dig out the instructions, but I don’t think the P2K instructions always mentiooned the screws hidden by the trucks on some of the locos. So while Walthers had an opportunity to update the instruction sheet it would appear they didn’t do so.
There’s really no comparing the Genesis to a Mainline, one is the top of the line highest detail series offered by the manufacturer and the other is an intermediate series at best. I think the only reason the Walthers model isn;t Trainline is that the shell IS newer tooling, unlike say the Trainline FA which is old Train Miniature tooling and quite crude by today’s standards - though they have a very good drive. So instead oof crude shell with no details, you have a decent shell with no details, and then you have the Proto series with decent shelsl AND details, like Genesis from Athearn. Athearn RTR isn’t nearly as detailed as Genesis, but it’s less expensive, as is Walthers Mainline.
