RAPIDO GP38 FIRST IMPRESSIONS
Aug 7, 2024 13:39:51 GMT -8
drolsen, rockisland652, and 5 more like this
Post by delta767332er on Aug 7, 2024 13:39:51 GMT -8
As an early-90s CSX modeler, I've been very anxious about the oncoming new generation of models of EMD's 40 Series Line of locomotives. While some are frustrated at the potential duplication of effort between SXT, Rapido, and COMW, I believe a quality GP38/40 model to be so important that I welcome the better odds of three manufacturers trying their "best," with the hopes that at least one of them will be good enough. Though, I fully expect history to continue to repeat itself with each example doing some things better than others, and none getting the best marks across the board.
I was fortunate to be able to provide the original project manager with several rounds of initial design feedback, some of which was shared here. Perhaps I don't like seeing how the sausage is made, but the early designs, as well as other Rapido design issues, had scarred (and scared) me with general pessimism toward this Rapido model. I don't know if the changes and improvements I helped incorporate would've eventually happened anyway, but comparing the finished product with what was going on before definitely make me feel like it was time well spent, and I was generally pleasantly surprised taking the model out of the box.
Anyway, yes, the model makes a very(?) favorable first impression out of the box. While we all have different standards of accuracy or pet peeves or tolerance for detail levels, the most important thing to me is that a model LOOKS like its prototype. General appearance, ride height, stance, "the look", proportional dimensions, etc. have to be right. If a model has all the latest gadgets and road-specific details, but its cab windows are the wrong size or has trucks that look like they're from a wooden toy, making it look like a generic artist representation of a locomotive, the "gimmicky" (spinning roller bearings aren't a gimmick) things just don't matter. The Rapido GP38 doesn't have this fault. It looks like an HO Scale GP38 to my eye. But will it after I look harder?
I will caveat my thoughts that they are only after an initial review after receiving the CSX 2046 today (for whatever reason, the others did not ship together). I will probably continue to find and have comments about things, which I will add later in the thread, if pertinent.
THE GOOD
~ The overall tooling "fineness" is very nice, with a few exceptions. Most of us diesel modelers hold an average of Cannon/Atlas 38/40/Clune/early Genesis tooling as the standard, as far as carbody details such as hood door latches, hinges, etc. are concerned. I remain frustrated that ScaleTrains' factory, which I consider the centric and flagship locomotive manufacturer for my needs moving forward, continues to produce carbody tooling on their engines that is slightly on the "chunky" side, with Death Star trenches around the sand cutout doors, etc. That said, more recent models have been improving and I expect that trend to continue. But overall, the tooling of the Rapido 38 is crisp and nice, with a notable exception being the battery box and hood end latch grabs/keepers, which are laughably and ridiculously almost void of relief. They look like a brass model's renditions. And I mean that in the worse way possible.
~ I have to eat 3/4ths of a crow and/or my foot on the fans. I was very pessimistic of the factory's ability to recreate a Cannon fan en masse on a production RTR model. I was basically wrong. While assembly could be better, and I assume will probably vary a bit from engine to engine, my 2046 showed up with what I would consider an "average" Cannon fan assembly and installation. Recent pics from Rapido still left much pessimism, especially about the base flange thickness and etched grill thickness, and yes, it's not an identical clone of a true Cannon fan, but their appearance "from the aisle" (i.e.- not zoomed in filling a laptop or iphone screen) is very impressive. BOTTOM LINE - This is the first EMD model that doesn't require replacement of its fans, in my opinion. They're the correct height, they don't have a stupid one-piece housing with a step to simulate the halves' joint. The motor and shroud and blades are at the correct height instead of being tooled as part of the hood roof, making them sit way too low (Genesis). I commend Rapido for taking the initiative, reaching out to Dave and making this happen. The bar has been raised, and every other EMD fan on a model going forward that isn't at least this good isn't acceptable. Do better!
~ The cab windows are basically the right size! This has been a chronic problem in the history of EMD models, I'm not sure why. (I do have workable hypothesis of windowframe and gasket measurement wire-crossing, but..........) Please spend more time staring at EMD Spartan Cab windows, or go do some measurements yourselves, and demand that your favorite model manufacturer gets the damn sizes right! There should be no more than an inch (usually 3/4 to 7/8) between the short hood weld/batten strip and the gasket of the windshields at the bottom. Then note the location of the top of the window should force the wiper mount to be so close to the numberboard assembly, that they require a notch in mounting flange. Kudos to SXT for tooling this in recent designs; it is missing on the Rapido. But at least the windows make the model look like an EMD. That said, I think I prefer the Genesis/SXT method of separate windows that can be cleaned of flash and reinstalled "perfectly." I don't have a problem with the one-piece glazing Rapido chose to go with, but removing it to blacken the edges and for weathering the engine, etc. will be more laborious.
~ Rapido allowed their art guys to work with Nick O'Dell and myself to do the stenciling and paint layout for all of the CSX engines. As such, the stenciling is extremely accurate as far as RTR locomotive models go. All credit to Nick for most of the "stock" CSX stenciling and decals; I had to fill in the blanks for some stuff specific to these 4 engines, especially the wonky 2046 which features some very funky hand-cut one-off stencils. Continuing to see Nick's work on RTR models is a blessing to us CSX modelers. Thanks to him for allowing that to happen. And thanks to Rapido for letting us do the work. I spent days and hours placing Nick's work onto the Rapido's drawings, as well as painting the drawings myself, to get them as accurate as possible. BUT, there are also some paint accuracy issues which we'll talk about in a bit.
~ The Blombergs are pretty good, except where they're not. (See below.)
~ The additional lighting, gauge lights, and onboard capacitors are much appreciated, though all the "auxiliary" lights are way too bright; I'll have to dig into LokProgrammer and see what can be done.
~ Pilot "buffer plates" are nice and narrow, as they should be in 2024.
~ This sound file and speaker installation is probably the best I've heard out of the box. That's not saying much with what's possible with aftermarket installations now, but the stock speaker installation is good enough to show off what is an AWESOME sound file from LokSound.
~ The hood-end logos aren't orthographically-stretched. Good job! Looking at you, ScaleTrains factory.
THE BAD
~ The factory took some liberties, or screwed up, some of the CSX paint schemes. I'm not sure if they tried to make the masking simpler between the units and accepted those compromises, or just plain messed up, but the treadplate surfaces on the 2046 should be gray, and they're blue. And on the 2013, they used the same masking as the 2046, resulting in a grey strip above the blue stripe on the blower duct - the whole side of the blower duct should be blue.......Won't be the hardest thing in the world to fix, but frustrating nonetheless. A painting fix that should not have to be done if they're committing to these separate schemes. Plus some other painting nitpicks like missing class light gaskets and the separate drop steps are all yellow, vs. just yellow edges, universal cut lever painting with yellow instead of black, some other minor nitpicks like that.
~ Undersized numberboard numbers due to jig limitations, a chronic problem for almost everyone; I'd love to see a remedy for this. Plus, the front numbers on the 2046 are incorrectly off-center. Not sure if this was just a simple "miss" or an orthographic error.
~ I'd like to see improvements in headlight brightness. LEDs allow tremendous scale luminosity (if you haven't operated at night with a Big Al installation, you're missing out on scale model railroading operation!), but this is being wasted with inferior fiber optic designs. It's frustrating to keep taking new engines out of the box from all manufacturers that have deck and ground lights that are basically as bright as the headlights. On bright, recent offerings from SXT and Rapido light up the track ahead the equivalent amount of a prototype headlight on dim, at best. Big Al (or equivalent) installations fix this problem, but it'd be nice to not have to rip apart a new engine to do that. I think the deck light and numberboards are providing as much light to the rails as the headlight on this thing!
~ The bell is in the wrong spot on the 2046, but I think they made a decision to put them all in the same place on the CSX engines. I will accept this and take the few minutes at the bench to fix.
~ The Leslie RS-5TRRO casting is..........non-enthusiastic. Amongst other issues, the bell rims are undersized. Haven't done any specific measurements yet, though.
THE UGLY
~ By far, the biggest issue with the model is the truck casting journal spring "window." While it isn't as abhorrent in person as in the blown-up photos we've been staring at for months, the trucks are still very disappointing, especially because I think they'd be pretty good otherwise. I could write a long post about this issue in and of itself but I'll briefly recommend just looking at pics and you can see how OFF it is. The cast awning above the window is too high on the sideframe, and the whole journal assembly should generally protrude up into this window further than it does, making the bottom corners of the window less visible/apparent, or at least be partially obscured by the journal assembly and/or pedestal liners. In short, the opening in the sideframe for the journal springs is mis-sized and/or mis-located and/or mis-shaped, or all of the above. I'm hoping some perceptual weathering can minimize the negative visual impact this has, not only on the truck itself, but in the overall appearance of the model. My, and others', eyes have went straight to this chasm into oblivion.
~ Those latch keepers........come on man! This isn't a brass model from 1984!
SOME OTHER STUFF
~ I'm neutral on the handrails. I appreciate the effort Rapido is making to give us robust handrails, but some of the plastic stanchions are still a little bent and wonky, making the entire handrail bow in toward the long hood on one side. I'll be able to fix this, but the argument is that this is the way to do handrails to fix all the handrail problems. In reality, I've seen molded handrail sets that are nicer than what's on this model, so..............? But yeah, a good Rapido execution is probably on average nicer than what SXT has been doing with their shrinkage issues over their first few years. But I think they're also improving that process recently...........
~ I've only briefly ran it so far, so not much on performance yet.
~ I could keep typing for an hour about little stuff that I may or may not address at the workbench like lift ring sizes and unattached sander lines, etc., etc. but I appreciate that stuff such as that is very subjective across the market of purchasers of this model, so I'll keep such things mostly to myself.
Overall, if the trucks were a little better, and I didn't have to splice Cannon latch grabs onto the model, I'd say this is a solid WIN in the GP38 column of needed models, assuming I don't discover some major tooling error that I haven't noticed yet without comparing to photos or drawings, but I theoretically did all that during CAD review, so unless something got messed up in the interim...........
As it is, I'm pleasantly surprised with what we have, especially with the pessimism I've had since the announcement that showed off CAD that was VERY bad. I'm assuming SXT has a 38 on their drawing board having done the GP40 work......as expected, there's some features of this Rapido model that I think will be better than SXT, and vice versa. It's frustrating we can't just have the best of everyone in one model! Honestly, I expected to be longing for a SXT GP38 when these Rapidos arrived. I still am, but I'm a little more worried now that there will be more features of the Rapido that I will prefer over a SXT 40-Line model. (read: fans, hood tooling precision, sound quality..........)
I may add some pics to the thread later this evening, but I'm sure pics will start showing up all over the interwebs, as deliveries have been happening in earnest this week.
Brian Bennett
I was fortunate to be able to provide the original project manager with several rounds of initial design feedback, some of which was shared here. Perhaps I don't like seeing how the sausage is made, but the early designs, as well as other Rapido design issues, had scarred (and scared) me with general pessimism toward this Rapido model. I don't know if the changes and improvements I helped incorporate would've eventually happened anyway, but comparing the finished product with what was going on before definitely make me feel like it was time well spent, and I was generally pleasantly surprised taking the model out of the box.
Anyway, yes, the model makes a very(?) favorable first impression out of the box. While we all have different standards of accuracy or pet peeves or tolerance for detail levels, the most important thing to me is that a model LOOKS like its prototype. General appearance, ride height, stance, "the look", proportional dimensions, etc. have to be right. If a model has all the latest gadgets and road-specific details, but its cab windows are the wrong size or has trucks that look like they're from a wooden toy, making it look like a generic artist representation of a locomotive, the "gimmicky" (spinning roller bearings aren't a gimmick) things just don't matter. The Rapido GP38 doesn't have this fault. It looks like an HO Scale GP38 to my eye. But will it after I look harder?
I will caveat my thoughts that they are only after an initial review after receiving the CSX 2046 today (for whatever reason, the others did not ship together). I will probably continue to find and have comments about things, which I will add later in the thread, if pertinent.
THE GOOD
~ The overall tooling "fineness" is very nice, with a few exceptions. Most of us diesel modelers hold an average of Cannon/Atlas 38/40/Clune/early Genesis tooling as the standard, as far as carbody details such as hood door latches, hinges, etc. are concerned. I remain frustrated that ScaleTrains' factory, which I consider the centric and flagship locomotive manufacturer for my needs moving forward, continues to produce carbody tooling on their engines that is slightly on the "chunky" side, with Death Star trenches around the sand cutout doors, etc. That said, more recent models have been improving and I expect that trend to continue. But overall, the tooling of the Rapido 38 is crisp and nice, with a notable exception being the battery box and hood end latch grabs/keepers, which are laughably and ridiculously almost void of relief. They look like a brass model's renditions. And I mean that in the worse way possible.
~ I have to eat 3/4ths of a crow and/or my foot on the fans. I was very pessimistic of the factory's ability to recreate a Cannon fan en masse on a production RTR model. I was basically wrong. While assembly could be better, and I assume will probably vary a bit from engine to engine, my 2046 showed up with what I would consider an "average" Cannon fan assembly and installation. Recent pics from Rapido still left much pessimism, especially about the base flange thickness and etched grill thickness, and yes, it's not an identical clone of a true Cannon fan, but their appearance "from the aisle" (i.e.- not zoomed in filling a laptop or iphone screen) is very impressive. BOTTOM LINE - This is the first EMD model that doesn't require replacement of its fans, in my opinion. They're the correct height, they don't have a stupid one-piece housing with a step to simulate the halves' joint. The motor and shroud and blades are at the correct height instead of being tooled as part of the hood roof, making them sit way too low (Genesis). I commend Rapido for taking the initiative, reaching out to Dave and making this happen. The bar has been raised, and every other EMD fan on a model going forward that isn't at least this good isn't acceptable. Do better!
~ The cab windows are basically the right size! This has been a chronic problem in the history of EMD models, I'm not sure why. (I do have workable hypothesis of windowframe and gasket measurement wire-crossing, but..........) Please spend more time staring at EMD Spartan Cab windows, or go do some measurements yourselves, and demand that your favorite model manufacturer gets the damn sizes right! There should be no more than an inch (usually 3/4 to 7/8) between the short hood weld/batten strip and the gasket of the windshields at the bottom. Then note the location of the top of the window should force the wiper mount to be so close to the numberboard assembly, that they require a notch in mounting flange. Kudos to SXT for tooling this in recent designs; it is missing on the Rapido. But at least the windows make the model look like an EMD. That said, I think I prefer the Genesis/SXT method of separate windows that can be cleaned of flash and reinstalled "perfectly." I don't have a problem with the one-piece glazing Rapido chose to go with, but removing it to blacken the edges and for weathering the engine, etc. will be more laborious.
~ Rapido allowed their art guys to work with Nick O'Dell and myself to do the stenciling and paint layout for all of the CSX engines. As such, the stenciling is extremely accurate as far as RTR locomotive models go. All credit to Nick for most of the "stock" CSX stenciling and decals; I had to fill in the blanks for some stuff specific to these 4 engines, especially the wonky 2046 which features some very funky hand-cut one-off stencils. Continuing to see Nick's work on RTR models is a blessing to us CSX modelers. Thanks to him for allowing that to happen. And thanks to Rapido for letting us do the work. I spent days and hours placing Nick's work onto the Rapido's drawings, as well as painting the drawings myself, to get them as accurate as possible. BUT, there are also some paint accuracy issues which we'll talk about in a bit.
~ The Blombergs are pretty good, except where they're not. (See below.)
~ The additional lighting, gauge lights, and onboard capacitors are much appreciated, though all the "auxiliary" lights are way too bright; I'll have to dig into LokProgrammer and see what can be done.
~ Pilot "buffer plates" are nice and narrow, as they should be in 2024.
~ This sound file and speaker installation is probably the best I've heard out of the box. That's not saying much with what's possible with aftermarket installations now, but the stock speaker installation is good enough to show off what is an AWESOME sound file from LokSound.
~ The hood-end logos aren't orthographically-stretched. Good job! Looking at you, ScaleTrains factory.
THE BAD
~ The factory took some liberties, or screwed up, some of the CSX paint schemes. I'm not sure if they tried to make the masking simpler between the units and accepted those compromises, or just plain messed up, but the treadplate surfaces on the 2046 should be gray, and they're blue. And on the 2013, they used the same masking as the 2046, resulting in a grey strip above the blue stripe on the blower duct - the whole side of the blower duct should be blue.......Won't be the hardest thing in the world to fix, but frustrating nonetheless. A painting fix that should not have to be done if they're committing to these separate schemes. Plus some other painting nitpicks like missing class light gaskets and the separate drop steps are all yellow, vs. just yellow edges, universal cut lever painting with yellow instead of black, some other minor nitpicks like that.
~ Undersized numberboard numbers due to jig limitations, a chronic problem for almost everyone; I'd love to see a remedy for this. Plus, the front numbers on the 2046 are incorrectly off-center. Not sure if this was just a simple "miss" or an orthographic error.
~ I'd like to see improvements in headlight brightness. LEDs allow tremendous scale luminosity (if you haven't operated at night with a Big Al installation, you're missing out on scale model railroading operation!), but this is being wasted with inferior fiber optic designs. It's frustrating to keep taking new engines out of the box from all manufacturers that have deck and ground lights that are basically as bright as the headlights. On bright, recent offerings from SXT and Rapido light up the track ahead the equivalent amount of a prototype headlight on dim, at best. Big Al (or equivalent) installations fix this problem, but it'd be nice to not have to rip apart a new engine to do that. I think the deck light and numberboards are providing as much light to the rails as the headlight on this thing!
~ The bell is in the wrong spot on the 2046, but I think they made a decision to put them all in the same place on the CSX engines. I will accept this and take the few minutes at the bench to fix.
~ The Leslie RS-5TRRO casting is..........non-enthusiastic. Amongst other issues, the bell rims are undersized. Haven't done any specific measurements yet, though.
THE UGLY
~ By far, the biggest issue with the model is the truck casting journal spring "window." While it isn't as abhorrent in person as in the blown-up photos we've been staring at for months, the trucks are still very disappointing, especially because I think they'd be pretty good otherwise. I could write a long post about this issue in and of itself but I'll briefly recommend just looking at pics and you can see how OFF it is. The cast awning above the window is too high on the sideframe, and the whole journal assembly should generally protrude up into this window further than it does, making the bottom corners of the window less visible/apparent, or at least be partially obscured by the journal assembly and/or pedestal liners. In short, the opening in the sideframe for the journal springs is mis-sized and/or mis-located and/or mis-shaped, or all of the above. I'm hoping some perceptual weathering can minimize the negative visual impact this has, not only on the truck itself, but in the overall appearance of the model. My, and others', eyes have went straight to this chasm into oblivion.
~ Those latch keepers........come on man! This isn't a brass model from 1984!
SOME OTHER STUFF
~ I'm neutral on the handrails. I appreciate the effort Rapido is making to give us robust handrails, but some of the plastic stanchions are still a little bent and wonky, making the entire handrail bow in toward the long hood on one side. I'll be able to fix this, but the argument is that this is the way to do handrails to fix all the handrail problems. In reality, I've seen molded handrail sets that are nicer than what's on this model, so..............? But yeah, a good Rapido execution is probably on average nicer than what SXT has been doing with their shrinkage issues over their first few years. But I think they're also improving that process recently...........
~ I've only briefly ran it so far, so not much on performance yet.
~ I could keep typing for an hour about little stuff that I may or may not address at the workbench like lift ring sizes and unattached sander lines, etc., etc. but I appreciate that stuff such as that is very subjective across the market of purchasers of this model, so I'll keep such things mostly to myself.
Overall, if the trucks were a little better, and I didn't have to splice Cannon latch grabs onto the model, I'd say this is a solid WIN in the GP38 column of needed models, assuming I don't discover some major tooling error that I haven't noticed yet without comparing to photos or drawings, but I theoretically did all that during CAD review, so unless something got messed up in the interim...........
As it is, I'm pleasantly surprised with what we have, especially with the pessimism I've had since the announcement that showed off CAD that was VERY bad. I'm assuming SXT has a 38 on their drawing board having done the GP40 work......as expected, there's some features of this Rapido model that I think will be better than SXT, and vice versa. It's frustrating we can't just have the best of everyone in one model! Honestly, I expected to be longing for a SXT GP38 when these Rapidos arrived. I still am, but I'm a little more worried now that there will be more features of the Rapido that I will prefer over a SXT 40-Line model. (read: fans, hood tooling precision, sound quality..........)
I may add some pics to the thread later this evening, but I'm sure pics will start showing up all over the interwebs, as deliveries have been happening in earnest this week.
Brian Bennett
