My care package from Feather River last week contained a D&RGW SD7 by Atlas. I had 4 of the LifeLike version, but only 2 unique cab numbers, so I sold the 2 duplicates. The 4 LifeLikes had no trouble with 100 car trains, since the individual units could each pull around 40 cars unassisted. My intent was to MU the one Atlas with the remaining two LifeLikes. There is a problem with that: The 5304 is by LifeLike, and the 5300 is Atlas. There is a major color mis-match in the striping. Is either model the correct color? Performance: The LifeLikes are around 5 years old, and are veterans of many hours of hard pulling on the NTrak layout. They are smooth, quiet and dependable runners. Very heavy, the are outstanding pullers for a hood unit, in spite of only having 4 of the 6 axles powered. The pair of them can pull around 70 cars. The Atlas and LL units MU together well under most circumstances. The Atlas unit is still a little stiff, and requires more juice to get the LEDs lit and start rolling. Once rolling, the two units run the same speed within my typical operating speed range. The Atlas SD7 has been run enough to wear the blackening off the wheel treads, and that leaves them slick and shiny. 17-18 cars is all the Atlas unit will pull. The heavy LL will lug down on the hills, but the Atlas will not. It slips when the LL lugs down, limiting what I can safely pull with the Atlas unit in the consist. I will probably purchase one of the GP9's Atlas has announced, if the paint matches the SD7. The GP9/SD7 pair can then pull one of my short, 33 car NTrakkers, while the pair of LL SD7s will remain assigned to an NTrakker with 66 cars. I feel the Atlas unit was worth the $39.95 I paid for it on closeout. The LifeLike units cost me $19.95, and that was the street price at the time. The second pair were picked up on closeout at $16.99 each, a couple of years later. The Atlas unit is a better model than the LifeLike, which was introduced about 7 years ago. Tractive effort is important to me, though, so I still think the LL units were a better value for my purposes. It would take two of the Atlas SD7s to pull a train I can pull with one LifeLike. Comparing closeout pricing, the Atlas cost over twice as much money for half the pull. At the typical Atlas "street price" ($65.00) the price/performance gap is even greater.
The Atlas SD-7 has the correct color. The Life-Like is wrong. All D&RGW SD-7s were delivered with the yellow striping and lettering. All SD-9s were delivered with Aspen gold (orange) striping and lettering. The first batch of GP-9s were delivered in 1955 with yellow striping and lettering. The second batch delivered in 1956 had Aspen Gold lettering and striping. Anything before the end of 1955 was yellow. Anything after the beginning of 1956 was Aspen Gold (orange). The upcoming Atlas GP-9 is correct for the second batch ordered in 1956. Any way you look at it the Life-Like SD-7 is wrong. Erik W
Great response, Erik! Grande gold has been a tough color for manufacturers to get right, similar to problems with the Santa Fe's indian red. Add to that differences in photography, and paint lots that fade differently, and we have a whole range of colors. But in this case, LL didn't get the wrong shade, they got the wrong color!
Maybe not. Check out this much later paint scheme, and notice how the weathering matches the LL unit, especially the pilot. If the new paint scheme is this bad, who's to say what the original color looked like before it was repainted? It's very possible that LL has a photo of a unit in original paint with the yellow that matches their color. http://www.railpictures.net/viewphoto.php?id=71433
So, is the GP9 Atlas announced yellow or orange on black? It looks yellow on the Atlas site: Arlas D&RGW GP9 [ September 20, 2005, 05:37 PM: Message edited by: LongTrain ]
Don Strack has a nice and thorough rundown on DRGW paint details on the Utahrails site: http://utahrails.net/drgw/rg-diesel-paint-schemes.php
