D500 posted:Above:
"Im interested, but I need to know one very important thing once the dust settles.... will the fixed pilots be like the Genset, with a narrow opening and a body mounted electrocoupler? Or like the S2, with the truck mounted couplers and that rediculous opening that went end to end so the coupler could swing?
If its like the genset, I'm in, if its like the S2, I'm not."
A friend has a Lionel Genset - one of the originals - and it runs very well. But - that Electrocoupler is so long that it just looks...so-o-o long. Certainly as bad - or worse - than the Big Slot. And if you have wide curves, even a swinging pilot can look no worse than that protruding coupler.
I know that it's mostly physics and geometry - it's hard to have something that functions like a "toy" in a world of tiny curves - even the "big" ones - that still looks realistic. (We steam types solve this with our road locos by simply throwing on a useless - but pretty! - scale coupler and ignoring the whole thing. That's our burden to shoulder.)
But - I think that I prefer the Big Slot or even a Swinger (the new kinetics are cool) to that long, long protrusion.
I disagree, but thats just me. The gap necessary for the pilot to move up and down with the truck, and the lack of full length handrails kills the effect.
The catalog says there'll be kadee pads, which for some, will solve the coupler sticking out (there's also multiple lengths of electrocouplers if you want to experiment with swapping them around in the parts bin). The long coupler shank is a compromise for the locomotive to run on 054 with fixed pilots. If they made it 072 they could have used a shorter one, but then Lionel would have never heard the end of why a 15" locomotive needed 072 curves. It would make more sense to use the narrow openings, because it would look utterly rediculous to have those postwar style slotted pilots, and an itty bitty kadee in the middle of it, but with the 031 rating, I'm not too optimistic.
