WalthersMainline SD70ACe - photos posted

Model Railroader General Discussion (Model Railroader)
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Walthers has now posted photos of their soon-to-be-released Mainline series HO SD70ACe. From the Walthers site, here are:

BNSF:

UP:

CSX:

CN:

NS:

No photos yet of the KCS units. It’s also not 100% clear if these are the first decorated samples that Walthers received, or if these are the final production units.

Overall they look pretty good. Certainly looks better than the Bachmann model, and though it needs plenty of detail, having all the starter points there for the grabs will make that quite easy to do. I’m actually surprised by some of the details they did include, like the cab shades and a certain amount of underbody piping. The paint looks nice, though they’re missing the multitude of warning labels that adorn the real ACes. Obviously they pale in comparison to the Athearn model, but they look like a good basic model of these units (even if the CN one is a foobie), and are priced in the right sort of range for what they are.

One huge issue that I see though: the windshields look too big (i.e. too tall). However, it does look like there are moulded gaskets in the clear inserts that aren’t painted, and I suspect that if they were painted the windshield would look more appropriately sized. This is partly why I wonder if these are test samples rather than final production units.

I have no use for their CN unit (too far off from the SD70M-2 that its supposed to represent), but I may pick up one of the undecorated units when they come out to turn into o

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In addition to this, MR’s report from the National Train Show in Portland says that Walthers is going to be doing more CN, BNSF and UP (perhaps new road numbers for each?), as well as UP’s C&NW, D&RGW, and SP heritage units.

EDIT: The new announcements are now up on the Walthers site. Good news for CN folks: the next run will include 8100-8103, the only actual SD70ACes that CN owns. Also a much better match for the Walthers model, with low headlight and isolated cab. However, as the protos are ex-EMD demo SD70ACe-P6 units, they’re obviously still a ways off. But better than the 8000-series stand-ins.

The new UP units are with the cab headlight and red sill stripe.

I’d expect Walthers to try to get full mileage out of these, so I would think the NS heritage units will eventually come too, plus other roads.