Walthers Proto Penn Central GP9

I'm a big Penn Central fan; I commuted on it to school from Washington to Springfield, MA during its first two years. I couldn't wait to get a Proto Phase III PC GP9.

I wouldn't have complained if they'd offered a PC GP9 in their Mainline range, where the only real difference would have been the lack of end grab irons, which as you can see in the photo are practically invisible on an all-black model.

The PRR had 270 GP9s, numbered 7000-7269. They all kept their numbers under PC. It appears that PRR/PC 7230-7269 were Phase III, with 48" diameter radiator fans, instead of 36" fans on earlier GP9s and GP7s. This final order also lacked PRR train phone antennas.

One difference between Walthers Proto and Walthers Mainline is that Proto has more features in the ESU decoders. The most visible change is that the number boards can be separately lit via function key 6:

In railroad rule books, the number boards are typically lit only on the control unit in the consist, but it looks like most prototype engineers forget to set this either on or off. Notice too that since the PRR GP9s kept their numbers going into PC, their numberboards retained the special PRR serif style, which Walthers reproduced.

The ESU sound decoder with the Proto version has the LokSound 5 prime mover delay at start feature. This means that when you throttle up, it takes the loco a fairly long time to begin to move, reproducing the prototype spool-up time. Setting CV 124=16 will turn this off; CV124=20 will put it back. As a longtime DC operator, I've never gotten used to features like this. I also set CVs 3 and 4, acceleration and deceleration momentum, to 0. These features are maybe more suited to large club-type layouts, but each to his own!