A 4,300 hp, six-axle answer to 20th-century pollution reduction guidelines is the latest locomotive to join Broadway Limited Imports’ N scale roster. More than 1,100 SD70ACe diesels were built and sold over the span of 11 years, eventually seeing service on almost every Class 1 railroad in North America and some regionals. Broadway Limited’s version features an accurately dimensioned body, a smooth-running flywheel-equipped motor, and a powerful Paragon3 Digital Command Control (DCC) sound decoder with BLI’s exclusive Rolling Thunder sound system.
Running greener. When the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced more stringent Tier 2 emissions standards would be phased in beginning in 2004, General Motors Electro-Motive Division started designing a new locomotive based on its SD70MAC design. EMD designers tweaked the 16-710 diesel engine to meet these guidelines, dubbing the upgraded engine the 16-710-G3C-T2.
In 2015, the EPA imposed Tier 4 emissions standards for diesel locomotives. The SD70ACe’s motor couldn’t be upgraded to match this new, stricter standard, so EMD, which in 2005 had been spun off from GM as Electro-Motive Diesel, developed its successor, the SD70ACe-T4, which runs on the 12-cylinder, four-stroke EMD 12-1010 “J”-series engine.
However, railroads can continue to use the Tier 3-compliant SD70ACe using credits earned by meeting and exceeding previous emissions reduction targets. Only two U.S. railroads, Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern, own such “Tier 4 credit units.” These are the locomotives represented by BLI’s N scale models.
Electro-Motive Diesel is still building SD70ACe diesels in Mexico for export; units sold to Kansas City Southern de Mexico, Ferromex, and Ferrosur are restricted to operation in Mexico and can’t cross the U.S. border.
The once over. Our review sample is decorated for Norfolk Southern no. 1112, a Tier 4 credit unit built in 2014. I was able to find numerous photos of the prototype online. The placement of details, paint, and warning stickers on the model almost all matched the photos. The exceptions were the front and rear stair handrails, which on the prototype are painted yellow. That’s easily rectified with a bit of paint designed to stick to flexible plastic, like Pactra Racing Finish. Also, in some early photos, what look like white rectangular stick-on decals protect the pilot where the m.u. hose ends hang, but those were gone in a few months.
The body shell’s satin-black paint job is smooth and even. The white printing, from the thoroughbred logo on the long hood to the stripe on the sill, is straight, sharp, and opaque. There are voids along panel lines in the herald, though, and the warning labels on the hood doors are too small to be legible.
Most details, such as grab irons and windshield wipers, are molded into the one-piece body shell, though there are a few separately added details, like the horn, m.u. hoses, cab sunshades, and uncoupling levers. The shell is finely molded, with sharp definition in the seams and grills. The handrails are close to scale thickness and include see-through chain links on the front and rear.
All the dimensions I checked, including the wheelbase, matched those on diagrams published in the November 2004 Model Railroader. The Magne-Matic couplers were both mounted at the correct height. The blackened metal wheelsets, on the other hand, were gauged slightly tight according to the National Model Railroad Association standards gauge. That slight discrepancy didn’t give the engine any trouble when traversing the Peco medium-radius turnouts and 13" curves of our N scale Canadian Canyons layout, though.