Atlas O Scale New Release Announcement

Why not post all that over on the Atlas forum section?

My guess is it will probably be a long time before Atlas makes the improvements on the SD40-2. I like Atlas products and I have a bunch of their cars on order but they are notorious for not making improvements in O scale. It took them many years and a lot of complaining to upgrade their 2 rail trucks. Maybe the roof walk issue might be easy for them to implement? I assume the reason they use MTH trucks on former MTH cars is due to the different mounting system. Maybe they could make a change to the mounting system that wouldn’t cost a lot?  Have you brought up any of these issues with the guys that work for Atlas?

While I do like the MTH version of the SD40-2, there are several other glaring issues that need correcting- the truck placement is way off, which lends itself to having an undersized fuel tank. The ditch lights need to have the option of being mounted on top of the porch, etc etc etc…if these were corrected and offered in 2-rail, they’d have a somewhat nice model in their product library.

@Curtis1983 posted:

Two days ago Atlas announced the SD40-2 on their Y-tube channel. These are from the MTH premiere line.

Questions: 1. When will Atlas make these in two rail?  2. When will Atlas correct the MTH oddities and make them better than the MTH tooling? example of this is the over sized framing around the air intake grills and radiator grills.

Atlas also needs to put their own freight trucks under the premiere freight cars. The MTH roller bearing trucks don't look prototypical and must go. The MTH roof walks are too thick and must be replaced with metal roof walks like on the Atlas Trinity hoppers and PS 4427 covered hoppers.

I have more to say but I'll quit at this time.

Just to clarify this is not a new announcement. This was cataloged in the Atlas O Summer 2021 catalog (https://download.atlasrr.com/0...UNE2021OMSRPOnly.pdf) and are finally shipping to dealers now. There are currently no plans for a 2-rail version of this model.

--Nick

Raleigh, NC

That makes sense. I was thinking to myself I don’t recall MTH ever making a (-2 scale wheels) version of their SD40-2. I never paid any attention to the announcement once I heard it was 3 rail only.

I would change the title of the thread.