When i heard some time ago that Broadway Limited Imports was going to produce AC4 and AC5 cab forwards I started saving my money since the flat-faced AC5 is my favorite of all the cab forward classes. I purchased my model from Trainworld. There were 16 AC5s #4110-4125 built by Baldwin between July and September 1929. #4110 was scrapped at the Sacramento, CA shops in 1953 and the rest of the class was scrapped by mid-1955. With their boiler pressure of 235 psi, tractive effort of ~ 116,000 lbs and 5,640 HP (not sure if this is IHP or drawbar HP), they were only slightly less powerful than classes AC6 through AC12 with the their boiler pressure of 250 lbs, ~124,000 lbs tractive effort and 6,000 HP.
The model has an ABS plastic body with a heavy diecast chassis. It weighs 1 lb. 14 oz. According to the maker it has all-wheel electrical pickup, is 16.25" long over couplers, will operate on rail down to code 70 profile and has a recommended minimum radius of 22". It’s equipped with a DC/DCC dual mode decoder with sound and synchronized puffing smoke. Before placing the model on the rails, I removed the Kadee std. head couplers from the loco and tender and replaced them with Kadee “scale” head whisker couplers, #158 medium shank on the tender and #156 long shank on the engine. Although the shorter medium shank coupler will fit on the engine as the glad hand just barely clears the pilot, the glad hand of the adjoining coupler would hit the pilot preventing coupling and not allowing the engine to be used in pusher service. The choice is yours. BTW, with the long shank coupler in place, the length over couplers moves up to 17".
On first starting the locomotive, smoke billowed out from under the smoke box and from the stack. I cannot stand the smell of model smoke as even a small amount of it makes me sick (doesn’t smell at all like the real thing) so I shut down and consulted the operators manual learning that by pressing F7 th