The stenciling to the right and below "Safety Always" says "F1" denoting the front of the locomotive. Not sure what the small yellow lettering to the right of that (on the sill) says.

In looking at the model photos on the BLI site:
1. While the addition of the class lights is incorrect and disappointing, at least it's not the SP light package...

2. If my units show up with gray stacks I'm going to be VERY unhappy.

3. The cab numbering looks a little thin to my eyes, and the unit is missing the numbering on the front of the cab, next to the horn.

4. Handrails will need painting.

5. I hope the sunshades are easily removable.

6. Also needs a Sinclair antenna.

That said, they're sharp looking units and with a little minor work can be improved upon.

One of these days I'm going to kitbash an Athearn blue box unit into one of the 2750 series units, with the AAR-B truck sideframes and the watchman heater box, but for now, I don't think I'll be overly displeased with these units...

Be prepared to be VERY unhappy - The stacks are silver gray.

The sunshades come off easy and leave two holes in their place.

Rob

Thanks for the input guys...I was considering maybe two undecorated units...I'll pass.Too pricey and I'm not into units with sound.Besides,I have two undec. Athearn units coming at the end of December.

Tom...I believe the lettering on the side sill states that the unit is the property of the leasing company.

Tom... your units are in! Please give Joe a shout/email about your payment. He has them ready to ship to you.

Yes... the stacks are silver/gray. Guess I'll have to fix some of the items mentioned here. I wondered about the shades... have never seen a Reading unit with shades!

Picked up mine tonight. Joe, a friend of mine, got these for us at a nice price. Modeltrainstuff.com has these for $180.

Here's mine being delivered via PC run through....

Hi guys just thought I would share my thoughts and some issues that I have found. I have both the RDG units from BLI, they are both good looking units with great paint and decals.



The prototypical features will leave the purest disappointed, they have class lights which would be a major fix requiring chiseling off the class lights, filling and repainting required, they have sunshades and yes the exhaust stacks are silver. The last two should be minor fixes, but for a brand new model it's disappointing they are not right. For myself I'm not overly fussed about them being 100% prototypical! I'm just glad to have another two SW1500's.





But there are major issues that have surfaced in recent weeks on other forums, and through contacts through my blog. Firstly there is the issue with the sound, at slower speeds it has an inherent problem of dropping volume then coming back again, this is on both my units and is also on four other units that I have told about straight from the box. To date there has been no solution found online to fix this and it looks like a return to BLI to fix it.

Second issue involves the automatic notching, load sensing feature on the Paragon 2 decoder, it seems to rev to like notch 8 automatically and not want to return with any inputs added from the throttle, it does return eventually but is hit and miss most of the time. The decoder does have manual notching as a feature through a function button but again it seems to be slow and not that responsive from the inputs again from the throttle.

The third which is worrying but has not be prevalent on all the models that I have heard about is stalling. Both my switchers experience sporadic stalling over certain sections of track, I have no issues with other shorter based switchers such as my Athearn Sw1500's or Atlas MP15's. The issue does seem to go away a little with more an increase in power and speed but this in no way solves it completely.

There are also some other little quirky behaviours that have been noticed by a few of us too, one which does get a mention is the horn echo and automatic extra two short horn blasts that the decoder does. These have been fixed with CV changes.

So in closing, great little units visually, but the caveat is if you want a prototypical RDG SW1500 you will have to do work on it. They have some issues that are just not acceptable for a brand new, out of the box unit with a price tag above $150, personally I like the unit and it displays some great slow speed running "when it's playing nice" if I can get a Tsunami Decoder in it, it may fix everything and I'll have a great pair of switchers, but in the end I shouldn't have to, and neither should any of us.

I'll post some photos on our layout shortly.

Jas...

Jas, thanks for the thorough review. Your closing comments about the “issues” and price tag echo what I’ve read on other forums. At this point, it really is beating a dead horse to complain about preorder headaches, high prices, and poor QC or detail accuracy. If the manufacturers aren’t getting the message by now, they never will. We all know that at a $150 plus price point, the darn thing should run like a Swiss watch!

Looking forward to those layout pics!

Thanks again, Mark