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From: "Paul R DOT Tupaczewski" paultup AT optonline DOT net
Date: Sun, 26 Jan 2003 12:32:25 -0500
Subject: Atlas C425s in EL - a more formal review
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OK folks, here's a more thorough review of the Atlas EL C425s... With
photos attached for reference (my apologies for the front and back
views, my scanner doesn't have very good depth of field :) - but at
least you can see the separate grabs)

The C425 body is the one you are all familiar with. Items that have been
changed, however:

* The grab irons are all separate wire pieces now (front, back, side of
nose, top of nose)
* The handrails have been redone with a much more prototypical thin
cross section (same goes for the stanchions) - the only negative here is
that the sidesill holes appear to be "semi-filled in" from the original
large round holes (see the side image) - I personally can live with
this!
* The drop steps at the end are thinner, see-through, and they work!
* The underframe is slightly longer now and extends out to the pilots,
and incorporate an integrated coupler box. This is a tremendous
improvement, as the earlier runs had the coupler box integrated into the
plastic pilot, and would bend slightly under heavy load.
* The pilots now have separate coupler cut levers and MU hoses, as well
as two small brackets on either side for holding the MU hoses in place,
as per the prototype. Nice!
* The handrails are appropriately colored. The corner grabs are yellow
(although they appeared to have forgotten the corner grab at the back
off the main handrailings, oops!)
* The plastic section of the long hood that juts into the cab is now
painted black to try and hide it (it works well)
* There are a painted engineer and fireman inside the cab now
* The cab side windows have nicely-painted aluminum edging
* The cab front windows have black gaskets, a nice touch
* The classification lights now have red/green/white plastic "jewels" in
them (haven't put it on the track yet to see if they light up).
Unfortunately, the larger "red" lamp wasn't made smaller - the original
Atlas model was apparently modeled after the GE-rebuilt D&H C424ms (some
of which, incidentally, were ex-EL C424s) - GE made the red light bigger
for visibility.
* The horn on this unit is, surprisingly, correct for as-delivered!
* To address Steve Twarogowski's question, I haven't ripped open this
unit (but I'll try opening up my undec C424 later), but from what I
understand, these units have DCC plugs, so you might be able to use the
NCE decoders designed for "plug-in" (NCE KRS-SR model).... I'll confirm
later.
* Couplers are Kadee-compatible "AccuMate" - this is a matter of
personal taste. I will be dropping in Kadee scale-size couplers in here,
and they're quite easy to replace.

Reiterating my previous comments - these are great!

- Paul



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