On Saturday, FedEx delivered a Lionel SD70ACe UP #8348 with scale wheels from my friends at Des Plaines Hobbies. I've had time over the last two days to do a fairly extension examination, and put several hours of run time on it.
I must say that overall I am very happy with the purchase. It is a very nicely detailed loco and runs very well. As with any model, it's all about compromises and choices that the manufacturer makes. IMHO Lionel made a pretty good set of choices at a very reasonable price point. Since there have already been reviews of the Scale version of the SD70ACe posted by Rich Gajnak on the OGR forum and by Ed L. on the S Scale SIG, I will try not to replicate that material there. Here's some additional observations I have: Fidelity to the prototype is very good -- I checked several key attributes like length, cab with, and height. They were either spot on or very very close. Scale wheels -- passes NASG S-4 wheel standards. Using the NASG gauge, Back to back is spot on and Flange depth is spot on. Wheel Width measured at 0.126". No Traction tires (as expected). Easily installed KD802s. On my model they were about 0.010" too high -- not a big deal. It is easily correctable with a piece of 0.010" styrene between the coupler and the scaler coupler mounting pad. And the Lionel supplied screws for mounting the couplers to the scale coupler mounting pad have room for that 0.010" styrene. Drawbar pull of my model SD70ACe is ~0.185kg (compare to ~0.100kg drawbar pull of SHS SW9) as measured with the MicroMark Digital Pull Meter. It has been running a fair bit today on my Lenz DCC controlled layout pulling 31 cars, including up a 2.5% grade, all at a very slow speed. It has a fan driven smoke unit, but I have not tested it -- I just used the easily available switch to turn it off. Speed on DC is very impressive. If I did the math right, it starts at 8.2V DC (4.7 SMPH) and at 12VDC it is at 49 SMPH. (Max speed for the real loco is 70MPH), and since this loco can run up to 18V, it likely will make that speed with no issues, but I did not test it. On pure DC Power there are nice lights and sound effects: FORWARD: Front Headlight on at ~2V Cab light on at ~3.8V Engine startup sound at ~5.5V Ditch lights on, Cab Light off, Forward movement starts at ~8.2V REVERSE: Rear light on at ~4.2V Cab light on at ~4.2V Engine start up on at ~5.2V Cab light off, Reverse engine movement starts at ~8.1V I did not test on Lionel Legacy, Lionel TMCC or AC, but the loco supports all of them in addition to DC and DCC. I must say it's really nice to not have to do any installs. And with all teh different control options, running at home or on the club layout becomes very easy... On DCC, programming was very easy. Comes at the standard address 3. I changed it to the 4 digit road number on the programming track. It also has a special method documented in the manual to allow changing the address right on the mainline if needed -- no programming track required. Decoder Pro 3.3.2, with SPROG II USB on a Windows 7 PC had no problem reading all the CVs, although there is not yet a Decoder Pro decoder profile for this decoder yet. I also used it to modify some CVs. For DCC Operation, I did need to change two manufacturer unique CVs (CV59 and CV60) for some decoder filter settings to have it run on the Lenz system. Just reduce the values of these two CVs to a value of 1 in each one. The loco ships with some higher values in these CVs which are tuned/tested on NCE DCC and Digitrax systems, but the manual provides guidance on when changes to these may be required. One nice DCC feature I noticed is that the loco will, transparently to the user, process both 14 and 28 speed steps. It's not necessary to do the normal user required synchronization of the speed step mode between the decoder and the command station by programming a CV29 value in the decoder and setting the speed step setting on your DCC cab. The built-in decoder just handles it for you. It's a nice touch to reduce user complexity. The built in DCC decoder also comes pre-loaded with the 28 speed table, and uses the table in both 14 and 28 speed step mode. In 128 speed step mode, it does not use the speed table. I should also note that the built-in decoder has some nice use of functions beyond the basis of turn on the headlight, blow the horn, sound the bell. It has functions assigned to increase and decrease the volume, startup the engine, shutdown the engine, etc. Appears to be no automated crew talk in DCC unless you activate via a function. Use the functions if you like, ignore them if you prefer. You can see all the details in the owner's manual at: http://www.lionel.com/media/servicedocuments/6541748171SD70ACe.pdf As I said at the beginning I really like this model. Very impressive product in my opinion. I think Lionel has a real winner here, and has really delivered a well appointed model that should well serve most S standard gauge modelers interested in modern motive power. I'm really looking forward to running these double or triple headed at the front of a long intermodal freight... Hope this might be of interest to others... Michael Greene Sent from my iPad
