Scaletrains announced a 50% off retail sale on its N 9-44CW locos, and as far as I can tell, it sold out within 24 hours. I was very lucky to get a BNSF Operator version with DCC but without sound for about the same price as a Kato loco. Here it is on my T-Trak layout:
The Scaletrains "Operator" series is a less-detailed version of their more fully detailed "Rivet Counter" locomotives. As it applies to the 9-44CSs, it uses a single body and cab style, as opposed to multiple road name and number specific versions, and it doesn't have separately applied grab irons. In other words, they're roughly comparable in detail to Kato N locos, which I can't complain about at all. However, they have full separate lighting function control of headlight, ditch lights, and numberboards.
I'm not sure how much of an advantage this is in N. Kato N locos have all the lights lit off a single set of lightbars, with on-off control of all of them via F0 in DCC. As a practical matter, if you see a loco on the road with its headlight on, the ditch lights are also on, but you don't really notice the numberboards in the daytime anyhow. I will say that the headlight and ditch lights on these locos are satisfyingly bright:
The loco number I have, 974, is part of a group of 9-44CWs numbered 960-1123 delivered to BNSF in 1996-7. They were delivered in the H1 scheme on the model. As it happens, I caught the prototype 974 on a railfan outings:
This was in Tehachapi, CA on December 10, 2014.
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