You must place an order for any of these products NOW if you want

GUARANTEED DELIVERY

Rapido has announced a new model, the B36-7. 

Purchased by and used in the United States for the most part, there is one important exception:  BC Rail.  See one of these engines below:

(Picture from "Paul D. Roy, PGE/BCR Motive Power")

The BC Rail engines and the Minnesota Commerical one, another striking paint scheme, are conditional:  that means a minimum quantity of orders must be placed for these two road names or they will not be produced.

Think these were early diesel models?  Think again:

The four-axle GE B36-7 was a high-horsepower speed racer built to appeal to railroads in the early 1980s looking to turbocharge their growing intermodal business. There were few drag freights or slow-moving manifests for these thoroughbreds in their early years. They could be found in multiples at the head of piggyback and autorack services and the new double-stack container trains.

Most of the CSX fleet of B36-7s were still in service well into the 2000s, usually in yard or manifest freight service. This ex-Seaboard System example was recorded leading a train out of Boyle Yard in Birmingham, Alabama, with a B30-7 partner in October 2005.

Replacing the “Universal Series” U36B in the GE catalogue, the first prototypes were built at Erie, Pennsylvania, in 1980 for the St Louis SouthWestern, otherwise known as the Cotton Belt. Initial orders were hampered by the recession of 1981-2; however, by the last year of production in 1985 some 222 locomotives had been constructed for US railroads with a further eight for export. We were surprised to find that this wasn’t that far off the total of GP50s ever built, yet we’ve seen three HO scale models of that so far!

The design found customers in several of the larger Class 1s of the period: Santa Fe, Conrail, Seaboard System, Southern and Southern Pacific. With the mergers of the mid-1980s and the Conrail split of 1999 the bulk of the fleet ended up with CSX and Norfolk Southern. Circa 2000 the CSX roster was overflowing with B36-7s, with around 140 former Conrail and Seaboard units operating all over the eastern half of the US. The ex-Seaboard fleet was officially retired towards the end of 2009, but examples were still working into 2011. They even still have some on the property. ***

The turbocharged 16-cylinder 7FDL prime mover rated at 3,600hp (later examples could create up to 3,750hp) and upgraded alternator and traction motors proved to be a reliable combination. However, with all that power on tap and with just eight wheels to lay it all down they gained a reputation for shaking the fillings out of teeth and marrow from bones. They were well liked by railfans though and were among the last of the Dash 7s in Class 1 service, outliving the six-axle variants by a number of years.

The increased power also meant increased noise. As well as the larger silencer (introduced in 1979), GE attempted to mitigate this with a pair of sound baffles either side of the radiator section. These were installed on all the Cotton Belt, Santa Fe and Southern locomotives and the first 15 Conrail units. By 1983 GE had replaced the twin radiator fans with a single large fan to reduce noise – three additional grilles in the doors in the radiator section made this upgrade obvious – and only Southern retained the baffles beyond 1986, and even then only the lower of the two on each side. The Rapido model correctly replicates ALL of these details as appropriate.

The Rapido HO B36-7 features:

• 3D scanned from an ex-CSX B36-7 for 100% accurate shape and dimensions
• Incredible underframe detail including piping and a ridiculous number of separately-applied parts
• Full cab interior, with correct orientation for standard or Southern locomotives
• Dead straight metal side handrails with plastic stanchions
• A crazy level of road-specific detail options, with different pilots, anticlimbers, plows, fuel tanks, air dryers, antennas, bell location, wind deflectors, headlight locations, air-conditioning units, beacons, different bodies, multiple nose and rear end styles, three versions of drop step, and so on.
• With or without class lights (as appropriate)
• Conrail locomotives have unique ‘built out’ style class lights
• ATSF, Conrail and Southern locomotives have single or double baffles appropriate to era and road number
• Three styles of operating, flashing ditch lights, front and rear (as appropriate)
• Working headlights in correct location, switchable number boards at both ends and cab interior headlight
• SP locomotive has working dual Gyralite and red emergency light
• DC/Silent (21-pin DCC Ready) or DC/DCC/Sound (ESU LokSound) options
• Accurate sounds recorded from an actual Minnesota Commercial B36-7 under load
• Rapido’s proven 5-pole skew-wound motor with dual flywheels and silky-smooth drive

Rapido Innovations:

1.  Combined plastic/metal wire handrails

2.  Illuminated cab interiors as standard

3.  Accurate underframe and precise details for various models.

For the first time in HO Scale, the Rapido HO Scale, GE B36-7 reproduces all of the incredible features of the prototype precisely to detail.  How do we know that?  Because, thanks to the kind folks at Transkentucky Transportation (now the largest operator of B36-7s in North America), we made a 3D laser scan of a real B36-7 – number 5815! In addition, Minnesota Commercial allowed us to make extensive measurements of their huge and eclectic collection of Dash 7s in Saint Paul so we could ensure that our model detail variations match the prototypes!