Lionel's New CSX AC6000's.

[magicman710]

When I first viewed the Lionel 2008 Volume 1 catalog on my laptop in February in a hotel in Buford, GA, one product that stuck out to me was the new AC6000CW's Lionel has planning to produce.

I love diesels. I also love CSX. So its no doubt that a preorder was in my plans. On June 26, 2008, I ordered the powered unit and the unpowered unit from Trainz. With the powered unit being $600, I hoped I was making a good choice. Lionel's shipping schedule showed that at that time the diesels would ship in July. My hopes were up. I had heard that you should never trust shipping schedules, but I still trusted the July shipping. The July came to pass. I looked up the schedule again and they had been pushed back to October. Once again, I got my hopes up.

3 months past. Nothing. Once again, I recheck the schedule. December. That will be the last month it changes to. I see a post on OGR in late December from a hobby shop owner declaring that a "Lionel tidal wave is coming". Included in his list of arrivals was the AC6000s. I finally had hope again.

Not long after, on January 5th, Trainz sent me an email letting me know my preorders were on their way. They arrived Friday, but I had already went to me weekend house, and would not be back unit Sunday.

Today, I got home and found the two boxes sitting at my doorstep. After quickly getting into the house and unboxing them, I was amazed at the detail. (I forgot to mention that earlier, I had seen a glimpse of the engines in a picture on OGR, but this picture didn't show much detail)

Here are some pics on my layout in progress. They are not good quality, I know, but you can get a basic idea of what the look like. I had some 0-27 track which I could assemble quickly so I used it as a test track. I haven't laid my Scaletrax yet.

                        

You can see in this picture a new prototype feature, ground lights. 

The trio of Legacy's....

Here are some pro's and cons of the engines:

Pro's

• Very highly detailed.
• Railsound sounds great.
• Paint job is very nice. The correct dark blue color unlike the MTH version's bright blue.
• Has a new feature, ground lights.
• Railsounds has a new sound, the air compressor.
• Is in the beautiful livery of CSX.
• Its powerful.

Con's

• The horn is the same as the SD70ACe. Its unprototypical and I don't like it at all.
• It costs $600, a bit overpriced in my opinion.
• It took 6 months to ship. (not really a con, since most everything takes that much or longer)

 

Conclusion: Lionel did a good job on this engine. While the horn could have been different, it still works. It's also Lionel's first modern GE with Legacy. I'm happy.

 

 

[magicman710]

Perhaps not many people know of CSX's naming of the AC6000CW as the CW60AC... I changed it to AC6000...

[Big Walnut Railroader]

Nice detail! Those are some impressive engines. Is the unpowered unit the "Big-Bass" version or simple non-powered?

[ChiefEagles]

Grayson, Miss Edna had several Saturday.  I had posted earlier that if it was not CSX, I would have bought one.  Great detail and sounds.  She did have one that was shorting out right out of the box.  Must have been made by MTH for Lionel.

[SchemerBob]

Wow, looks like Lionel put accurate Steerable trucks on it, too, I was hoping they wouldn't put HiAd's on it like in their concept drawing. That makes the model very accurate to the real thing. They sure look awesome!

The only thing that struck me the wrong way was when I heard from the OGR forum that the units have the exact same horn sound as the SD70ACe...I didn't think Lionel ever used the same horn on two completely different engines. What's worse is it doesn't sound anything close to what the real AC6000's actually have on them, which are K5LA's I think. The horn really isn't that prototypical for the SD70ACe, either, but it does slightly resemble it. But at least it's a good sounding RailSounds horn, even if it isn't right for the specific locomotive.

The appearance of these engines is just amazing, perhaps even a little more detail than the SD70ACe. Lionel has, once again, built a VERY good diesel locomotive. Along with the SD70's, these could be the best diesels Lionel has ever produced!

[Anonymous]

I have the CSX GP-30 and the GN GP-7. I can say the GP-30 has more detail on it than the GP-7 but both of them are fine locos. I haven't had the priv. of seeing either of the SD70s or the AC6000 but I would love to see one. Heck if I could swing it I would probably get one too!

I really wish they had not cancelled the C&O E-7s! That was a huge disappointment.

[magicman710]

Craig, the unpowered unit is simply unpowered. I didn't feel that it was worth the price of a powered loco to get some better sounds.

Bob, like you said, the detail is fantastic. Much, much better than MTH version. But, as mentioned, the horn does not fit the engine at all and I really would like a better one. As I said on OGR, Lionel definetly should have done a better job with that.

Chief, I'm sorry Lionel didn't include the paint scheme for the NonSense railroad... But at least the didn't make one in BNSF colors, like MTH did...