3 - Minor De-Railment

Not really. After some additional research I've come to the conclusion that my choice of locomotive will not work with the Grand Valley layout. I'm a little bummed out because I wanted to go with the Burlington Northern loco since that is what runs through my hometown of Yakima, WA. However, I also learned that BN was actually created in 1970 as the result of the merger of Great Northern, Northern Pacific, Chicago, Burlington and Quincy and the Spokane, Seattle, Portland Railroads. The new company operated until 1995 when it merged w/ the Atchison Topeka and Sante Fe Railroad to become Burlington Northern Sante Fe. Today it is only 1 of 4 transcontinental railroads operating in North America. Of the 4 remaining it is the 2nd largest in size, the 1st is Union Pacific. The new BNSF locos have different coloring than the good 'ol green and white BNs. Okay I'm getting off topic :-)

Back to the loco switch -

The Grand Valley layout has 18" radius curves and the loco I picked the SD40-2 is just too long to make that turn at normal speed. I've read that it can work but I'd have to decrease the speed to make the turns without fear of de-railment. The SD in the name is General Motors designation for a 6-axle "special duty" diesel locomotive. In checking out the forums at http://www.modelrailroader.com/ I determined that this will be too long to safely handle the 18" radius curves.

Instead of the SD40-2 I've decided to go with a GP40. The GP in the name is General Motors designation for a 4-axle "general purpose" diesel locomotive. This will give me better performance on the curves since it has 4 instead of 6 axles it is not quite as long as the SD. Unfortunately I could not just swap model numbers and keep the Burlington Northern roadname without a significant jump in price. Since this is our first layout I didn't want to jump the gun and go with an expensive locomotive to start out with. We're talking a price difference of around $150 more for the GP than the SD...YIPES!!

Rather than spend way more money just to keep the Burlington Northern roadname I decided to go with Union Pacific. This is still a railroad that runs in Washington State w/ terminals in Seattle and Spokane.


It looks like a more affordable GP40 w/ the Burlington Northern roadname will be available in May 2008. So I guess I'll just make do with the Union Pacific until then. :-) Oh well the way I see it - one small change now will save huge headaches later one. It would be so frustrating to spend all the time working on the layout only to find that the loco you have won't run on it.

Some good news I found the control system that I talked about in the first post at a local hobby store for cheaper than I could get it online...SWEET!! So I snatched that up.