New Walthers Mainline SD60 Review

As I mentioned in a previous post, I decided to order one of the new Walthers Mainline SD60s. Walthers says these have new gearing and truck sideframes from the Life Like/Proto SD60s they're based on. I ordered the DC, DCC-ready version. I like sound, but too much of it, from my point of view anyhow, can drive you up the wall.

I was flying blind on my order from several points of view. Walthers really isn't consistent from marque (i.e., Proto, Mainline, Trainline, etc) to marque, and even from run to run within the marque (e.g., GP60) on DCC adapter socket and lighting features. I had sort of anticipated that these units would have ditch lights equivalent to the new Mainline SD70ACes, but they don't -- they just have a high headlight. Also, unlike some Proto units, although the number boards light, they aren't separately controllable. Here's the chassis showing the light arrangements, just a single LED:

The DCC interface is a 9-pin. Since the headlights are controlled by single LEDs front and rear, a Digitrax DH126 is a good choice. It fits very nicely on the chassis.

Here's the effect with the headlight lit:

Here's a better view of the loco:

With the 2000 series number and yellow frame stripe, these are best used for post-2005 and in local service. From that standpoint, it's a little unfortunate that they don't have ditch lights, although in local service these aren't always used. On my roster, this will run best with Kato SD9043MACs and Atlas Trainman gensets. Both of these have ditch lights, so I can use their ditch lights if the SD60 is trailing. I made a test run in a consist with a genset:

The genset runs a little faster than the SD60, but with speed matching in DCC, this should be easy to adjust. I'm going to put up another post soon on speed matching.

These locos are robust, smooth runners, with very good weight.