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These guys are right. These locos are swwweeeeet!!! The paint is very nice. The details, while not complete (no coupler cut bars, hoses, mu cables, etc front or rear) are also really nice, and what's not included can be easily added. The trucks are great. They are fairly heavy locos and have good pulling power and run very nicely (and quietly too!) I have 6 of them (2 each of the DRGW, UP, and SP) and I think they are the best bang for the buck of any loco I own. I also have a P2K SD50 in the SP and while I like it, I give a slight edge to the Athearn SP SD50. The P2K trucks, while nice, they're wrong. My 10 year old son said it best - "They're nicely detailed, but are too thin". To me, the Athearn trucks, while not quite as detailed, are nicer - look more rugged and realistic. I also think the P2K axle spacings may be wrong but I don't know. The P2K has some small paint issues with the SP unit (but I see that with all brands.) The paint is very nicely done, but the nose and rear lettering are done in silver, not white. The Athearn paint on all six of my SD's is beautiful. Definite edge there. The P2K is a heavier unit (though in the case of the SD50's the Athearn units are quite beefy themselves.) so it will pull more, like most any P2K loco. So P2k gets a slight edge there. There are some issues with the Athearn SD's that I must tell you about. On 2 of mine (UP and DRGW) some of the flush mounted cab widows have fallen out, on the other UP unit one of the number boards fell out as well - this all occurred when I first took them new out of the box last January. Luckily I found them in the box or on the floor. Others have also reported this experience.as well. The 2 SP units that I bought last week had no issues with the windows or number boards, however, when they assembled the cabs on both, they didn't align them properly and the engineer's side of the cab was assembled out of alignment and was not flush with the battery boxes (beneath the cab). It was in about 8 scale inches, creating a ledge beneath the cab like I've never seen on any EMD (or GE, Alco, Baldwin, etc, for that matter). I was able to disassemble and reassemble it in about 5 minutes and the cab's are now correct / flush on both units but I did accidently break a handrail, but it was easily fixed. Just today I was in the LHS where I bought them, picking up other items, and I mentioned it to the guy who works there so that he might check (and fix if needed) the other units he still had in stock. He checked and the issue did not exist on the remaining stock, but while taking one out of the box, he saw that a window or two had fallen off. Fortunately he found them in the box. So just be aware of these potential issues. When it's all said and done, I really like these Athearn SD50's a lot, and I still really like the P2K unit as well, but give the edge to Athearn. Further, I paid $25 less for the Athearn than the P2K (and bought both at a good discount) so I think the Athearn SD50's give the most bang for the buck (even with the issues I mentioned.) I've experienced a variety of issues with every brand. Just today I received 2 of the new Atlas C40-8's in UP paint. Very nice units that everbody's been asking for, but the paint is kinda wrong. It's kind of too orange, and not really yellow. Ryan also mentioned this on TrainOrders, and I must say I agree with him. These are still definite must have units, though, and I'm thrilled to have such fine Atlas units. This is a great time to be in the hobby! Take care. Greg
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