Hi guys today I’ll be talking about my latest addition to my HO scale collection of locomotives, my Atlas Santa Fe Dash-840BW!!! I picked up this HO scale locomotive at a estate sale in November of 2023 with some other rolling stock I bought.
Ok so let’s talk about the history of this type of loco! The GE Dash 840BW was released in 1989 and was one of the first locomotives to be produced with the North American Safety Cab which was a new different approach of a cab to make the train safer and more comfy for the engineers. General Electric made many dash 8 configurations but Santa fe was the only railroad to buy the Dash -840BW configuration.
The locomotive itself has a Atlas “Dual mode Decoder” which means it has a plug that you have to switch to enable the decoder for DCC operation or switch the plug to disable the decoder for DCC operation. This was a state of the art technology back in the early 2000s which meant you could operate the locomotive on DC or DCC! This locomotive is equipped with directional headlights (controlled by F0 on DCC) but no lighted ditch lights.
This locomotive has a insane amount of detail from, all the accurate handrails, MU hoses in the front, a real chain on the side of the locomotive, and even crew member figures in the cab of the locomotive! I love this locomotive, it is such a brilliant and smooth runner and will be in my roster for many years to come!
Thanks for listening in, make sure to check out the photos, and I’ll see you guys in the next one!
Above me is the plug in DC or Analog mode.
Now here is the plug in DCC mode when the decoder hs been enabled.
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