Hi all,
Yesterday on eBay, I came across an HO scale E8a drive chasis only with a new driving mechanism.
The new mechanism/mechanism’s so far as I can tell are more procisely contacting worm gearing for quiet running.
For any of you who have it, is there a difference between the new and old driving mechanisms?
I need to wait before I get one anyway.
Thanks in advance.
I don’t believe thare’s any substantial difference in the running gear between newer and older Proto units, as least for E units. I have an older E-7 and two newer E-8’s and all three are equally quiet and smooth. Apparently Walthers has been doing some marketing hype about the new gears being more “precise” but I think that’s just what it is - hype.
The only new drive stuff I am aware of is that Walthers plans to ‘standardize’ gear ratio to 14:1 - P2K engines have been all over the place with gear ratios, and this will be good. I suspect the new P2K F7’s use this new standard. I got the above info from Andy Harmon; here is what he has found in P2K engines:
Proto 2000, formerly known as the Gear Ratio-Of-The-Month Club, has an interesting variety. The GP7, GP9, GP18, GP20, GP30, GP60 are 12:1. The SD7, SD9, and switchers are 14:1. The SD50, SD60, SD60M are 18:1 (compounded). The GP38-2, and I believe also the RS27 are 12:1 compounded actually 11.3 to 1. The SD45 is 9:1, and the U28B and U30B are 5.65:1. Got a headache yet? Good news is that Walthers sez, all new Proto locos will be 14:1 as God intended (starting with the F units that will be part of the Empire Builder release) and they have indicated that they may retrofit older units as they re-run them with 14:1 and maybe even offer replacements. That would be nice, but it may take a while - recent re-runs like the GP30s, GP9s, etc. have the original 12:1 gearing. Really they were doing fine until they started putting compound head gears on them. I still have no idea why - they aren’t needed. The 4-axle compound (GP38-2 and U-boats) has a 16:17 reduction on the compound. Why even bother?
Jim Bernier
I can add one thing to this here, the SD 60 (and perhaps others) do not have the Athearn-copy truck style that the gp 30 ect. have. Instead they have copied Atlas in the assembly and axel styles.
Jim, thanks for the gear ratio info,… how did you find all that out?
Dan
Dan,
Andy Harmon(of RPM fame) did the research and posted it over on the Atlas HO Forum. It was such good info that I copied it into a Word document for future use…
Jim