Some time back I made a purchase of a Kato SD70ACe in Norfolk Southern paint so that I could model the ferry move of 611 from Spencer NC to Strasburg PA. I usually model the transition era, but I thought that particular consist was interesting enough to put it on the NTRAK layout.
Of course when show time arrived the SD70 couldn't keep up with the J class and 611 spent most of its time pushing the diesel around until one or both of them derailed. It worked fine at home, but nothing screws up your carefully prepared equipment like show time. But I digress.
When I was shopping for the SD70 I noticed that they were offered in heritage schemes, one of them being the Erie Railroad (and another being the Erie Lackawanna). I wanted the NS paint so I merely took note of it and moved on.
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| Kato SD70ACe |
The N scale SD70ACe in Erie heritage livery was offered by three different manufacturers; Broadway Limited, Kato, and Fox Valley Models. I own a Kato or two, and I have seen BLI locos in action, but FVM is a company that I have heard good things about and have never seen in person. Of course, they are all three sold out everywhere you look.
The BLI is the only one that comes DCC equipped from the manufacturer, and sound equipped at that, and the price shows it. I've heard mixed reviews about Paragon decoders, and the one BLI loco (a heavy Mikado) I've seen in person ran fine with the sound off but was a stall monster with the sound on. Between that and the price difference (about $120 more than either the Kato or FVM models) I wasn't too keenly interested in BLI. That was a good thing, I guess, because there were none to be found anywhere at any price.
That left Kato and FVM, and I was able to find examples of each on the well known auction site. The Kato was sale-by-auction at a starting price $50 below the FVM's buy-it-now price, and the added bonus was both of them were already chipped. I put a max bid on the Kato at a price equal to the FVM (both with shipping), put the FVM on my watch list, and waited for the end of the auction.
I got sniped at the last minute (one reason I don't really like the auctions and would rather use the buy-it-now option if the price isn't too unreasonable; in a case of poetic justice the sniper got sniped in the last 30 seconds) so I didn't get the Kato. Surprisingly with the snipers sniping each other the final sale price of the Kato was as much over the price of the FVM as the starting price was below.
At any rate, I purchased the Fox Valley Models unit at the buy-it-now price and waited for it to arrive. When it did, I put it on the track and found that it had already been programmed as well as chipped. I didn't care for the way it was set up, so I reset the decoder and started over.
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| Fox Valley Models SD70ACe |
Before setting up the speed table, however, I tested the loco at the default settings. At full tilt boogie the loco ran about 158 scale MPH, which is quite a bit lower than the Kato did (it ran over 200 before I started adjusting it). It continued to run at that speed until I had reduced the throttle below the halfway point (speed step 14 of 28), at which time it started to slow down when the throttle setting was reduced.
From a dead stop the loco wouldn't run until I had adjusted CV2 to 3, at which point it started smoothly and ran so slowly that I really had to pay attention to see that it was moving at all. The Kato will do the same (in fact during testing I accidentally left the throttle at speed step 1 and turned away for a few minutes, and when I turned back I had lost my loco), but at a higher CV2 setting (7 instead of 3). I then speed matched it to the Kato, which had been speed matched to the Bachmann J class 611, and ran all three of them consisted but not coupled. I was then able to adjust the individual CV settings to get them all to run consistently together at all throttle settings (except for speed step 1, the J class just won't go that slow so unfortunately I had to speed the diesels up to match it).
So what are my impressions of the Fox Valley Models SD70ACe, you might ask? Well, in a word it is a beauty. Reviewers have been pretty harsh on the front windows being the wrong size and their placement being off slightly, but truth be told I'm just not that picky. It looks fine to me. The loco runs smoothly and quietly, the lights are nice and bright, and the paint scheme is just fantastic.
The model comes with a small bag of tiny intimidating detail parts, and the loco has dimples to show where to drill to install them, but since I will probably only break this loco out for shows I opted not to put the fiddly easily damaged detail pieces on. If you look closely the absence of grab irons and windshield wipers is noticeable, but from behind the ropes on the NTRAK layout I don't think anyone is going to see it.
And so, like it or not, my railroad is slowly being dragged, kicking and screaming, behind a pair of SD70ACe's, into the future.
