Atlas Model Railroad Co. Product Review

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This review appeared in the December 2002 issue of Railroad Model Craftsman Magazine. Reproduced with permission of Carstens Publications.

EMD SDP35: HO SCALE

Review by: John Edwards

If you have been in the hobby for more than a few years, say ten or fifteen, the last several locomotive introductions by the model manufacturers have probably boggled your mind as far as their execution. It wasn’t that long ago that we were happy to have a generic SD40-2 that we could apply parts and paint to in order to have an accurate model of our favorite prototype. Now we not only expect more, we get more. A case in point is Atlas’ new SDP35.

First, a little prototype history is in order. The last E9 rolled out of La Grange in December of 1963. It would be a few more years before Amtrak, but railroads could see the end of passenger service looming. Not wanting to invest in E-units that were great for passenger service, but not so great in general freight service, the Seaboard Air Line asked EMD for a passenger version of the soon to be introduced SD35. The first of 20 units were delivered to the Seaboard at the New York World’s Fair in August, 1964. Interestingly, Seaboard was trading in early E4’s and E6’s on this order and one of them, SAL E6 3014 was the star of EMD’s 1939 World’s Fair exhibit, also held in New York. It was brought to New York again for the 1964 fair and participated in ceremonies before heading off to the scrap yard.

Although EMD would put steam generators on two more models of hood units, the SDP40 and SDP45, none reached high sales levels. The SDP35 was sold to four railroads: 20 units for SAL, one for Atlantic Coast Line, four for the L&N, and ten for Union Pacific. The Seaboard used the units in passenger, piggyback and freight service. The Union Pacific, on the other hand, found them unsuitable for mainline passenger service and restricted them to freight or company specials. According to Diesel Era, the LN& units may not have had steam generators installed at all. For more complete information on the SDP35, see their March/April issue.

Mechanically, this model follows Atlas’ recent releases, with a very smooth drive train powered by a five-pole skewed armature motor with two flywheels. Electrical pickup is done with what has become almost the industry-standard brass bar behind the truck sideframes.

Atlas’ dual mode decoder (d.c. and DCC) distributes power to the directional headlights and motor. As delivered, the engine is set up for straight d.c. Gently removing the dynamic brake housing/fan section allows access for converting the loco to DCC. Pull out a little jumper plug, re-insert it one row over and DCC is now in charge. Atlas has already programmed the decoder with a two-digit address corresponding with the last two digits of the road number. Un-numbered units have a default address of “3.” I immediately re-addressed my units to four numbers before testing.

With 128 speed steps, you expect excellent performance and Atlas delivers. I was able to run the units below two scale miles per hour consistently without any jerkiness. One unit easily pulled a twenty-platform double stack train and 15 loaded piggyback cars with a brass caboose tacked on the rear. On one unit, I changed out the Atlas decoder for a Soundtraxx unit and had no trouble fitting in an enclosed speaker.

Externally Atlas’ SDP35 is just beautiful and matches the prototype in dimensions and details. The tooling is arguably the best available today. With one minor exception, I could not find anything that was oversize. The painting is so good you don’t even want to weather the models, being afraid you’ll cover things that are a joy to look at. As an example, on the Seaboard units the trust plate has five lines of print. This is in an area that is nine scale inches high, and with enough magnification you can read the five lines of text. I have estimated this lettering to be about one and one-quarter inches high on the prototype. That is somewhere in the neighborhood of 0.014” high. How do they do this? Incidentally, it was the Mercantile Bank Deposit and Trust Company from Baltimore, Maryland, that financed the Seaboard units. I found this out by reading the trust plate on the model.

There were two phases of the SDP35. The Seaboard units were the first produced and had a flat roof over the inertial filter with flat grilles. Subsequent orders had the raised roof with angled edges and a corrugated intake grille. Atlas offers both types of bodies. They also had different noses. The Seaboard, L&N, and ACL had nose headlights, in addition to the lights over the windshield. Union Pacific had only the upper lights. Atlas has the correct versions. The Seaboard had Hancock air whistles, and Atlas has faithfully reproduced and installed them on the Seaboard units.

Common to both phases is the thinner center frame area that was later made standard on the 35 series and subsequent EMD units. What really set these units apart from the thousands of look-a-like, standard-cab EMD diesels are the square ends with a bulge on the left side to fit the Vapor-Clarkson model OK-4740 steam generator. Since EMD used a standard SD35 frame for the SDP35, they fitted what is basically an anti-climber to the rear of the frame in order to have room for a crewman to walk around the back of the hood. Because of the bulge there wasn’t room for standard steps, so ladder steps were used on the rear of the frame. Atlas has followed these changes exactly.

There are a couple of items to be installed by the modeler: sunshades (easy), snowplow (easy) and rear handrails (not easy until you figure out how to do it).

This is the only nit I have to pick. Looking at the photos you can see that the rear handrails are different from what is normal from EMD. This is to accommodate the short back porch and unique steps. Atlas’ parts sheet with the exploded diagrams does not show the SDP35’s rear handrails, even though you get the correct parts. The model’s rear handrail set is in five pieces, the back railing. two stanchions, and two more railings that follow the steps down. The stanchions are molded so that the handrails fit into small sleeves at the top of the stanchion. It is easier to assemble these parts before putting them on the locomotive. Atlas also includes some chain that fits between the side and rear handrails. This is so oversize in relation to the rest of the model, I decided to leave it off.

See-through fans are on the roof and if you blow into them the fan blades will turn. While this ventilation helps with keeping the decoder cool, it also opens up the possibility that some modeler will figure out a way to power those fan blades.

The only preserved SDP35 is on display in Hamlet, North Carolina. I thank Atlas went down there with some kind of downsizing device. How else could they have made such a beautiful model? See it for yourself at your favorite dealer. The SDP35 has a list price of $139.95.