Lionel GN U33C

[nblum]

I found some time this afternoon to finally unpack my only locomotive purchase thus far this year, the GN U33C Uboat in Big Sky colors. Needless to say, I bought it at least as much for the colorful scheme as anything else. My first reaction was the aesthetic one of this is one nice looking loco, with absolutely perfect paint. There is just no doubt that the Chinese manufacturers have taken the art of train decoration to a new level from what it used to be. Don't get me wrong, I still like banged up postwar and Lionel's USA production, but when you consider that this loco is two-thirds the MSRP of Lionel's Soo Line SD60 from, what, eight years ago, it's apparent that the offshore move has increased detail, decoration quality and value extraordinarily so.

My second impression is this thing has a lot of lights. I know squat about diesel locomotives operationally, but it's got this cool beacon thingy strobe on the front roof (yellow), and it has two headlights as well (sort of like high mounted ditch lights). I know those aren't the correct terms but it sure looks neat :). Someone will clue us ignoramuses in, I hope. :)

Operationally, it was perfect with the exception of the sound. While it had the routine best of breed acoustics for the horn and bell, in particular, the sound system had some real breakup as well, and dropped out every now and then. I thought, uh-oh, reset time at best and back to Lionel for chipicide at worst. I then noticed that the sound breakup only occurred at highest volume, so I used the cab-1 to get down to the next lower level of volume (3 of 4 I believe). That solved the breakup problem but not the drop out problem. I then looked for the volume control, which is hidden in a nice rear roof accessible hatch. I don't know whether this thing is really a potentiometer or just looks like one, but it was at maximal travel and adjusting it to a medium setting after turning it back and forth a few times seems to have solved the dropout problem entirely. The other interesting thing, and perhaps I just haven't been paying attention here, is the hatch is attached by small round magnets. "Sweet" as my American sons say, or "brilliant" as my British nephews/nieces say :) Lionel has come up with some clever ways to install hatches that you can access easily on their locos in recent years. This one is functional and clever.

So all in all, a really nice loco that shows how much more we get for our money from Lionel now compared with 1996, IMO, or even 1999.

[daan]

Sounds like a neat buy.. It's very common for potmeters to have contact problems now and then. If it's shipped that way, a bit of dust could have forced itself between the slide contact which makes the cantact not working properly..
It's the same thing after a few hours runtime, it can happen again and it's easily solved.
It's really a genious idea to use magnets on hatches instead of clips!

[nblum]

I posted some amateur(-ish) photos on the OGRR Forum for those interested in this loco:

http://ogaugerr.infopop.cc/groupee/forums/a/tpc/f/453102703/m/8201083123

[pbjwilson]

Nice locomotive. I can relate to your thoughts on detail and improvements in operation over the past decade. A large retailer in my area, Chicagoland Hobby, has several large display cases chuck full of beautifully detailed locos from every manufcturer. Just about anything you could possibly want they have. I can remember 10 years ago when I first went there, they had one display case with a couple dozen locos in it. And the amount of scale sized equipment outnumbers the more traditional O-27 size many times over. The hobby and what is being offered by all manufacturers is very different from 10 years ago. I only hope that there are enough people interested in the hobby to keep it going strong in years to come.