Rapido is happy to announce the next in our series of classic General Electric locomotives, the C30-7 in HO scale.
The C30-7 was General Electric’s improvement of the U30C locomotive, featuring a 16-cylinder 3,000 horsepower diesel engine. Built between September 1976 and May 1986, over 1100 units were produced for many of the Class I railroads across the United States for use primarily in heavy-haul freight. A fair number would go on to have extended careers with both short/regional lines and private industrial railroads, owing to the locomotives reliability and pulling power.
It is, perhaps, the most polarizing locomotive from the 1980s and early 90s. The C30-7 was GE's answer to the SD40-2. When one thinks of Powder River and coal, the C30-7 isn't far behind. Burlington Northern owned the most in the States, with just over 240 examples. Santa Fe was a distant second with 157 C30s.
The C30-7 later gave way to the similar C36-7, as well as various unique models such as the Conrail C30-7A and the BC Rail C36-8m, rebuilt from former Conrail C30-7s.
Our C30-7 is based on our earlier B36-7 model, and so the angles and contours should be correct. But we know less about the railroad-specific details, and we want these to be as perfect as possible. If you see any issues on the renderings, please reach out to us ASAP as we hope to get the model into tooling by the fall of 2022. You can contact us through our webform, and we'll make sure that it goes to the appropriate project manager.
Rapido’s new HO scale C30-7 features:
- Correct nose and body contours
- High or Low headlights, as appropriate
- Correct Rockwell or Adirondack trucks, as appropriate
- Full traction motor casings details
- Heavy, die-cast weight for heavy hauling
- 5-pole skew-wound motor with dual flywheels
- Operating headlights and rear lights
- Operating roof-top beacons and class lights, where applicable
- Detailed underbody piping and conduit
- Separate grab irons and handrails
- Sound-equipped units feature ESU Loksound V5 decoders
