I'm thinking about aquiring a couple of Kato GP-35's from the run they made a couple years back, and wanted opinions from people who own/operate them (performance, detail). I remember people complaining about Kato's electrical pick-up in some of their locos (maybe it was just their older NW-2's I'm not sure) and was hoping the Geeps didn't suffer from that.
I'm happy to report that their GP35's (at least the three that I own) run just fine. Their SD40-2's suffered from electrical problems thanks to a new pickup design, but all of their runs of GP35 have the tried-and-true hard-wired pickups. Detail-wise, they are about the same as other Kato units. While they are not as detailed as some of the recent offerings from P2k, Athearn Genesis, or Atlas, they still look great, and are the best GP35's on the market.
All three that I own run well. The detailing is reasonably good with one exception. Mine are Santa Fe and the font size for the cab numbers is not correct. This is also the case on the SD40-2's, but not on the SD40's. I don't know if this is a problem on other roadnames.
<font color="336633">Im very happy with my GP35, although the handrails are not up to todays standards they are still ok, one problem I do have with all my kato's is that they seem to be excelent track cleaners.... they pick up so much gunge on the wheels you dont need to bother with track cleaning, the NW2 is the best one for that </font>
