Atlas HO U30C Rock Island

Description

Railroad Short Name: CRIP

Built by General Electric between 1966 and 1976, the six-axle, 3000-h.p. U30C locomotive was General Electric’s alternative to EMD’s SD40 series. In that ten year time frame, GE built 600 U30C’s for a wide variety of operators. The largest customer was the BN, with 180 units compared to the US DOT, which purchased a single locomotive for their Pueblo test facility. Detroit Edison and Kaiser Steel might have been the most unique operators to purchase the U30 (DE receiving 11 and Kaiser with 5). The Kaiser Steel U30’s hauled ore trains from mine to mill in California’s Eagle Mountain, while the Detroit Edison locomotives were assigned unit train duties from the coal fields in western Pennsylvania to DTE’s generating station in Monroe, Michigan. By the late 80’s, most U30C’s had been retired, while a handful remained in operation for second hand operators.

Locomotive Features:

• Adirondack floating bolster trucks with or without bearing caps as appropriate per railroad
• Coupler pocket designed to accept AccuMate Proto-couplers
• Golden-white LEDs
• Antenna detail where appropriate per road name
• Realistic die-cast underframe
• Five-pole skewed armature motor with dual flywheels for optimum performance at all speeds
• Separately-installed scale windshield wipers, metal grab irons and fine scale handrails
• Directional lighting
• With or without nose headlight as appropriate per railroad
• Non-operating cab roof-top beacon detail where appropriate per road name
• Detailed crew members
• Marker lights with separate lenses
• Snowplow
• Separately-applied drop steps
• Recommended radius: 22″

Silver Sound Ready:

• Atlas Silver Sound Ready models are equipped with a speaker for easy conversion to sound with the addition of a decoder.