On Christmas Day, Rapido Trains made three major locomotive announcements for HO scale.  Its first announcement is an all-new EMD GP38.  With 706 examples built between 1966 and 1972 at EMD’s plant in La Grange, Illinois, the EMD GP38 was the four-axle iteration of EMD’s “38” series of second-generation non-turbocharged 2,000 horsepower road units. This locomotive laid the groundwork for EMD’s later GP38-2.  First release paint schemes will include Santa Fe (yellow warbonnet w/or w/o class lights), Baltimore and Ohio (blue/yellow), CSX (various gray schemes), Southern (black tuxedo), Norfolk Southern (black with ditch lights), Penn Central, Conrail (blue),  Burlington Northern (Cascade Green/black), and BNSF (Heritage 1).

Responding to numerous customer requests, Rapido Trains also announced a new production of its superbly detailed MLW M420 locomotive in several new variations and new road names. Leading off the new run will be Canadian National (rebuilt 3500-series featuring modernized long hoods with knuckle-buster door latches), and Oil Creek and Titusville (ex-CN 3500 class, black/yellow).  If a sufficient number of customer reservations are placed, the following M420 versions will also be produced:  British Columbia Railway in both standard and cabless M420B versions with correct smaller fuel tanks, modified stepwells and rock lights in four different BCOL paint schemes. Additional provisional road names include Providence and Worcester with Type B trucks and unique headlight arrangement in both the as-delivered red/white and the later simplified red/brown P&W schemes, Delaware-Lackawanna #2045 (gray/white), and Minnesota Commercial #35 (red).

Rounding out Rapido’s holiday announcements is an all-new Canadian Pacific H1a/H1b Hudson 4-6-4 Steam Locomotive. Between 1929 and 1930, the Canadian Pacific Railroad built twenty of these graceful locomotives to lead its mainline passenger trains. The last ten (2810-2819) were designated as H1b Hudsons, and were the direct predecessors to the later  H1c/d/e “Royal Hudsons”.  Rapido will be producing several different variations of these CPR H1a/b steam engines, enabling modelers to replicate these locomotives at any point throughout their service life, including the preserved CPR 2816.

 

All locomotives are to be available equipped either in DC/Silent (21-pin DCC-ready) or DC+DCC+ESU Loksound versions. For further information, contact your favorite dealer or visit the Rapido website.