Atlas in their July release has announced a new model of the EMD GP40-2, Phase 2. This is the correct phase for the Frisco units delivered in 1979 as SLSF 750-774. Unfortunately, they are not producing Frisco painted units at this time. However, given the willingness of Atlas to produce Frisco units and their sales success, I suspect we will see these units at some point in the future in Frisco paint. The initial release does include former Frisco units that were repainted after 11/21/1980 for that subsequent post merger railroad (I just can't bring myself to mention its name). These units are repainted (I just know there is Mandarin orange and white under that paint somewhere) and renumbered in its 3050-3074 series. Please see http://www.atlasrr.com/HOLoco/hogp40-2b.htm Recommend we work on posting more photos of these units in Frisco colors. This site has accumulated way too many photos of the units in the "wrong" colors painted for that post merger railroad. Also, notes of encouragement to Atlas showing the demand and requesting units painted for the Frisco should help us get the models we want faster. Also, note that the initial release includes carrier specific light packages for the Southern Pacific (SP) and Cotton Belt (SSW). Hopefully, Atlas will follow the lead of Athearn on their new SD40-2 and we will soon see units produced with a nose gyralight package specific to the Frisco. With the current generation and flexibility of DCC decoders, working gyralights would be really cool! Hope this helps. Thanks! Mark
Four of these in orange and white would look great pulling the Texas Special (78/79) through Springfield . . . . Might bump my 70's timeframe up a little more. Ship IT (behind GP40-2's) on the Frisco! Rick
Mark and All: We can only cross our fingers and hope that the next run of these will be for our beloved Frisco. When speaking with the Atlas rep at the OKC Train Show last December he shared an interesting bit of their marketing philosophy in the fact that on every run they do they try and represent a road from every part of the country. With a locomotive as common as this we can only hope this doesn't push the Frisco several runs down the line. As far as the nose gyra-light is concerned, unless Atlas changes its philosophy that probably won't happen. When discussing the U30B project he pointed out that the Frisco was the only road they had found that had the single lens gyra light and they already had castings for the horizontal dual one and the blank one so they wouldn't do a mold just for that one. He asked if I had a choice which one I would prefer and after consulting with Rick we both felt the dual one was better because it would already be wired and could be easily scraped off and changed. Of course the EMD nose is far tougher. Bob Hoover FriscoFriend
A welcome addition, indeed. When I did my first GP40-2s, I had to swap the nose on the Athearn blue-box model with a nose & cab from an Athearn GP50 to get the correct nose length and anticlimber pilot. And unless I'm willing to do that again, my Athearn RTR GP40-2 will just have to run with the 81" cab and no anticlimber. However, I COULD use a 4th unit, so.........
OK, is it me, or do the fuel tanks on the illustration of the BN unit seem a bit small. Makes me wonder if this model will be released with a full-sized tank (as Frisco's GP40-2s had). I could be concerned over nothing, but... Carving out the nose to install a Details West Pyle Gyralite is not a problem with me- I've done that on my other Frisco diesels that sported them in real life.
Terry, Rick was referring to the time period of the late 1970s, not train numbers. Hope this helps. Thanks! Mark
Checking back, Atlas has only done run run (the initial one) of this GP40-2 model and that was two years ago so anoth run might be in their plans for the near future. I will request that they consider Frisco for their next run but that might be a stretch considering we still have the U30b in the pipeline. Nothing ventured, nothing gained!
