Broadway limited SD40-2 SOO:
The leader in the first company to mass market sound equipment and bring us to a new age I decided to try out there SD40-2
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FIRST IMPRESSIONS:
The packaging needs to improve compared to Tower 55, Atlas, Athearn and Tower 55. Plus doesn’t compare to the 4-8-4 Northern packaging, which brings it up to that signature quality level. The model comes with mostly plastic parts and nicely detailed, except for no ditch lights. Why didn’t they have these with ditch lights? An example is the BNSF SD40-2, they need to have ditch lights but they don’t have them. The plastic handrails are a little bigger gauge than I would expect but pretty good.
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ON THE TRACK:
As with most of BLI’s trains a solid performer, but programming need to be done on the main by using CV17. However, JMRI new version (1.7.3) does program these correctly. But, a booster is needed otherwise there is not enough voltage to program.
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SOUND:
The sound is QSI sound and typical:
On a rating from 1-10
F1 - Bell pretty good. 8
F2 - Horn Very good. 9
F3 - Uncouple. Ok. 5
F4 – Fans. Great 9
F5 – Dynamic brakes – hmmm ok 8
F6- Air blow off. Excellent 9
F7 - Brake squeal - 6
F8 - Mute. Excellent 9
F10 – ID when idle, when running speed in MPH. Excellent 10
THE GOOD, BAD AND UGLY:
Mostly I would rate this very high up in comparison to other manufactures. I’m hoping that down the road that BLI offers models with both ditch lights and pre-1995 non-ditch light era
Overall rating (1-10) 8