AZL March 2024 New Items Part 1

Any thoughts of pre-orders as other vendors offer? Only 50 units seem to limit only one order per state (for example) and the rest of the world misses out entirely. I missed out on the first one because I was on the road on a work trip, and now I have to wait a few years before the next release? Not a great vendor/customer policy in my opinion. You've probably disappointed more customers than satisfied.

In AZL's defense...you really just never know what is gonna be a homerun like the Spirit of UP. For every 10 saying they missed out, maybe only 2 or 3 might have actually bought one. So AZL may have made 100 and sold 63. Or maybe they made 75, sold 'em all, and still have folks missing out.

I remember a story that Frank Angstead of Intermountain told at his (very informative) presentations at various train shows over the years. He said that Intermountain did a run of cylindrical hoppers (this was N or HO...many years before their failed Z experiment) and they sold out almost immediately. So Intermountain figured "hey, we have a gold mine here" and did an even larger second run...which proceeded to sell about 10% of the first run. Turns out, they pretty much pegged their market exactly perfect the first time around. It was a very expensive mistake and many lessons learned. One of the biggest being: assuming that because they sold out, there was some massive desire for more. After the dust settled they acknowledged that nobody was really letting them know they wanted more.

Well, in the "eyes bigger than my stomach" department... I actually had a chance to purchase all of the aforementioned except for the standard cab UP SD70ACe, and I couldn't get it done. 

So, a good example of what happens...you think you want something but then the timing doesn't work quite right and you realize the financial reach just isn't worth it. So here I am in front of a nice second helping of crow.      In fairness, I didn't dream that it would happen within a week, and with the BN SD40-2 release looming.

Excellent question!

The older tooling has different features which fit my era better, to wit...
1. They have the older white GPS dome vs the newer PTC antenna array.   This is suprisingly noticeable, even in Z.
2. The first round of SD70ACe's offered the original cab configuration, which did not have the prototype's noise isolation feature, signified by a seam running across/around the nose of the locomotive.
3. The numbering for the BNSF and UP locos represents the earliest production runs, and thus aligns with my era better.  That one is less noticeable than the first two, but still is evident in photos.  In my era (around 2007) the SD70ACe's are pretty much brand new.   So, having the early numbers and other physical characteristics of the early production ACe's are nice details to pay attention to.

Adhesion to a particular era and locale is not something everyone is interested in, and I fully support ALL the ways that modelers choose to enjoy this great hobby.   However, it is also very much a large part of my enjoyment of the hobby, to research and try to get as close as I can.  That can be tough in Z sometimes, but I have a healthy acceptance that there are always going to be compromises.

Are the above items MAJOR issues?  No.  But will I try to find the older tooling versus the newer run?  Yes.   The ACe's aren't an integral piece of the puzzle for me...they're a nice-to-have, and provide a little more variety to the roster.

I actually hadn't considered any changes in the mechanism like the blind drivers.   I don't have enough information to know if that is a help or hindrance, but either way it won't sway my preference for the older locos.

New locos are now live. BNSF ES44AC 25th Anniversary and 3 BN SD40-2s.

uszscale.com has the ES44 now. Just purchased one. Thanks, AZL.