I ordered the locomotives and all the cars from my local shop last Wednesday. He called on Saturday saying they were there already.
Not TCL related, but it is Kato passenger fyi. The second release SDP40Fs are on the street. I rode the SW Chief to CA in 1973, and it was pulled by three of these bad boys. The original release of just two wasn't enough!! Cowl units are cool. ETA: technically I think it was still the El Capitan at that time. Still great memories.
The E7s have a new light board with a surface mount LED soldered onto the board. There is a special light shield/guide assembly mounted in the shell that the LED fits into when the shell is installed on the chassis. I don't know if the old standard round package that used to be mounted will fit into the new assembly. Without any modifications it will not shine into the light guide at all. I just clipped the Digitrax LED off leaving about .3" of lead to which I soldered the surface mount LEDs from the Kato light board to. Those little guys are tiny and have to be removed carefully from the light board and soldered to the ends of the leads. The LED has to also be flipped to have the correct polarity.
I suppose one could try to just shorten the leads on the stock decoder LED to match the position of the surface mount ones on the new boards and see if there is enough room between the shield on the light guide and the top of the chassis.
I sort of figured that Kato might have redesign the chassis on the new E7A units. I believe that they did a DCC board for the E5A and these two chassis 'could' be similar. What was interesting about the aledged E5A DCC board was that it was announced as an E5 and E6 replacement... hmmm... not E7. I see it advertised on a couple of etailer websites as a Train Control Systems N 1481 KO8D-E. It is an 8 function decoder for Kato E5 and E6. Makes me wonder if there is an E6A announcement in the near future. Still wondering about E5B and now E7B units.
No, the chassis for the E8, E7 and E5 are all identical except for the E5 seems to not have the extra plastic clips for the power pick up spring strips. The light shield/guide assemblies in the shells are all different as well as the position of the headlight LED. The E5 LED is farther forward and the E7 is farther back. The E8 does not have lighted number boards whereas the other two do. (I added the extra resistor on the E8 below to dim the LED some)
Thanks for the education and great photos Russell. It's nice to see that Kato is constantly upgrading their designs. It will be interesting to see if future E8/E9 releases incorporate new light pipes and the new E7 light board. It looks like "lighted cabs" could be in our future as well.
Thanks for the indepth review of Kato E units. Just to confirm. Your photos show the E8 on top, E7 in the middle and E5 at the bottom. Good thing those leads for the LED is long enough to be customized for each E unit. Sent from my SM-J737T using Tapatalk
That is correct. I believe the decoder for the E8 would fit okay in the E5 but it would be sitting back a ways from the light guide. The E5 decoder would have to be shortened to fit in the E8. I don't have any decoders for other brands that fit these locomotives.
I just checked some of my E8s and found that the number boards in the nose do light up sort of. They do not have any light pipe going directly to them like on the E5 and E7 but there is enough ambient light bouncing around under the cab from the LED to illuminate them somewhat.
Are you sure about that? N-Scale EMD E8 and E9 : Precision Railroad Models (katousa.com) I thought all of my E units except the early releases (CB&Q) and C&NW units (no number boards) had illuminated number boards.
Like I said, they don't have a light pipe going directly to them like the E7s and E5s but they do light up due to the ambient light. Unless it is a very early model that do not have changeable number board inserts. I got out some of my old Santa Fe and UP units and it is just solid shell on the inside but the same light guide setup like my more recent PRR units.
Yep. IIRC, the F units have the same setup. I don't think the number boards should light up very much, so it's probably intentional. I can't remember what the E5 configuration looks like, but with the smaller side mounted number boards, they likely need a bit more "piped light" to show up.
