Model Railroading > Rapido Santa Fe RDC’s

Got my Santa Fe RDC’s bright and early this morning. Going to take them to the club this evening and give them a test run and check them out. Tomorrow I will take them to San Diego and run them on the La Mesa club and around Tehachapi loop. Forgot to ask. Anyone else out here get theirs yet?

Steve Kelly
CSMRRC. LMMRRC



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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/28/19 12:59 by santafesteve.

New York Central M453 arrived this morning and has joned M454 on my model RR.

There is at least one operational difference with the first Rapido product of the RDC-1.  You can now turn on and turn off the interior lights.

John

Video of the Rapido RDC-1, New York Central M453.

John

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santafesteve Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> ... Tomorrow I will take them to San Diego and
> run them on the La Mesa club and around Tehachapi
> loop.
> ...


take some pix, we’d all love to see ‘em!

~ Mr. MRL

So do we get a report of the operation of the Budd cars or are you still cooking the photos? I have had a pair of the BCR RDC-1 models and am waiting for an RDC-3 to complete the set. The models I have always run well. I have ridden the prototypes in Canada, out to Astoria, OR and need to make a ride in commuter service south of Portland.

RE: Rapido New York Central RDC-1 M453.

1.  Car operates differently than M454 from the first production run.  There appear to be some electrical gremlins.
2.  Underframe and components that were black on M454 are dark blue on M453.
3.  I hesitant to say much else as my Digitrax Super Chief system was installed in May 2003, and presumably I have done some of the upgrades installed as I can get to higher CVs.
4.  As a double-check on my system, I MU'ed two Atlas Gold Series ALCO RS-3's (NYC 8235 and 8241), put 9 freight cars behind them; and they appear to operate correctly
5.  I have sent two e-mails to Rapido, one on Monday after I received the M453 and one late this afternoon.  No answer, but it is likely very cold in Ontario and office may not be staffed.

Before anyone draws any conclusions, I suggest we wait until we hear from Jason and his team.

John
 

Bill answered John by email and we're looking into his electrical gremlins, but I will give my answers to a couple of the points in this and his other thread for general info below.

DocJohn Wrote:
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> RE: Rapido New York Central RDC-1 M453.

> 2.  Underframe and components that were black on
> M454 are dark blue on M453.

That's correct. The NYC RDCs - along with many others - were delivered with blue underframes. These were almost all eventually painted black or just covered in so much guck that you couldn't see the blue any more. When doing a delivery scheme, we usually use blue. When doing a later repaint like M454 we go with black unless the railroad repainted the blue.

Regarding the other comments, the interior lighting has been toned down in our new run of RDCs in response to customer feedback. We also included the option to turn interior lights on and off. Whenever we include an improvement, such as a better colour match or revised lighting, we will invariably have some people who are disappointed because they want their models to match. It's case of darned if you do, darned if you don't. We might have some old lighting circuits kicking around the warehouse if anyone wants to swap them out.

One thing we have noticed on these RDCs - and we're raising a stink with the factory - is that the wheels could use a good cleaning. We are going to make doubly sure, going forward, that all models receive a final wheel cleaning immediately before packaging. If any Rapido model is stuttering out of the box, please check the wheels for crud.

Best regards,

Jason