Re: [CBQ] Rapido SW1200

["William Hirt" <whirt@fastmail.com>]

I've read and heard fights about CB&Q colors for 30+ years and I am just worn out on the topic.

I agree the gray is dark, but it can be lightened with weathering. That is my eventual plan. I just figure as a delivery unit (which is states on the box), this is how it looked fresh out of the EMD paint shop.

I have communicated with Rapido about two other issues. The first is the cab lettering numbers are white instead of gold. The gold numbers were shown on the paint diagrams for pre-orders. Since these are supposed to be delivery units, the cab numbers should be gold. I figure this was a factory screw-up. I plan to remove the numbers (Rapido sent me 10 different ways to do this) and decal the correct color ones.

The second issue is with the sound decoder. Rapido uses the LokSound5 decoder which I think is fine (I have several other LokSound decoders and they work great). The main problem is for most road's deliveries the horn was a Leslie A125 or A200. Rapido is using a customized OEM version of the LokSound5 and they only offer 5 multiple chime horns and the Hancock air whistle. No Leslie A125,  Leslie A200 or Wabco E2 - the "blat" horns. I also was not thrilled with their bell choices. If you have the LokSound programmer, you can get around this by downloading the complete SW1200 sound file that ESU/LokSound provides to your computer and then download it to the decoder (a great feature). I've overwritten the Rapido sound file with the full ESU file and have many more choices and options.

http://projects.esu.eu/projectoverviews/18?page=15&count=10&order=date&type=all&cat=18

Scroll down in your web browser to the SW1200 567C. Yes the delivery SW1200s had 567Bs, but the Rapido factory delivered sound file has a 567A, so for me it is close enough.

I've attached an Excel with my Function remaps for ESU SW1200 decoder. The throttles I give my operators only have 12 functions and generally no one ever uses more than the headlights, bell and horn in my experience.

For those who bought the Walthers Mainline SW7s recently offered with sound, they use the LokSound Essentials decoder. This is a stripped down LokSound5 decoder with only 32mb of memory instead of the 128MB that a full LokSound5 decoder has. The LokSound programmer was recently updated to allow you make limited changes to these decoders and the programmer will also download a code update into the decoder.

Bill Hirt

On 9/7/2021 10:17 PM, Nelson Moyer wrote:

So the bottom line is that nobody defended Rapido’s color choice, despite the fact that it’s an outlier. Sad day for prototype modelers.

 

Nelson Moyer

 

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ESU SW1200 file for Rapido locomotives.xlsx
Description: MS-Excel 2007 spreadsheet