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Another play on the Desktop series, I was chatting with earlier about the Atlas SD7 and thought that a tribute was N order.
I picked up this early run N scale (1:160) SD-7, custom painted for I&M Rail Link, on ebay recently for $30. Truth is, it should be an SD-9 as I&M #604/600 was an SD-9, but no one is going to be able to tell the difference I suspect. In this image, the local is running long hood forward as it rounds a curve right into focus (and I realize that it's time to dust my desk again). These six axle Kato powered locomotives from Atlas are amazing runners, crawling at scale speeds across switch points and great for switching operations, and, as I mentioned above, can be found cheaply on the used market. If you're considering trying N scale model railroading and are not planning to invest in DCC, I would highly recommend and Atlas SD7 or SD9 as a first loco.
I also wanted to point out the 17,600 gallon Liquid Sugars tank car behind it, also by Atlas. When I first started in N scale around 1993 (it just occurred to me that model railroading may have been what caused such a long hiatus in finishing "The Kentauride"!) I bought a string of Atlas "shorty" beer can tank cars, and they were just awful. The handrails were way oversize, and they derailed if you even looked at them funny. They were cheap and readily available, and I spent a small fortune replacing ladders and handrails and trucks with Micro-Trains trucks to get a bunch of tank cars that still just looked wrong. Then I discovered the Roundhouse cars, swapped all the trucks over from the beer cans, and I was happy; I finally had tank cars that looked somewhat realistic and could be backed up over a #4 switch. It's pretty amazing how far Atlas has progressed in twenty years however, or even less, since that LSIX car has been in my possession for at least six or seven years, and it blows away anything I ever "tuned" with brass detail parts. The entire brake mechanism is there, all the handrails are precisely to scale, I cannot find a single fault with it. To quote an old ad slogan, Atlas, you've come a long way baby!

Description
Another play on the Desktop series, I was chatting with earlier about the Atlas SD7 and thought that a tribute was N order.
I picked up this early run N scale (1:160) SD-7, custom painted for I&M Rail Link, on ebay recently for $30. Truth is, it should be an SD-9 as I&M #604/600 was an SD-9, but no one is going to be able to tell the difference I suspect. In this image, the local is running long hood forward as it rounds a curve right into focus (and I realize that it's time to dust my desk again). These six axle Kato powered locomotives from Atlas are amazing runners, crawling at scale speeds across switch points and great for switching operations, and, as I mentioned above, can be found cheaply on the used market. If you're considering trying N scale model railroading and are not planning to invest in DCC, I would highly recommend and Atlas SD7 or SD9 as a first loco.
I also wanted to point out the 17,600 gallon Liquid Sugars tank car behind it, also by Atlas. When I first started in N scale around 1993 (it just occurred to me that model railroading may have been what caused such a long hiatus in finishing "The Kentauride"!) I bought a string of Atlas "shorty" beer can tank cars, and they were just awful. The handrails were way oversize, and they derailed if you even looked at them funny. They were cheap and readily available, and I spent a small fortune replacing ladders and handrails and trucks with Micro-Trains trucks to get a bunch of tank cars that still just looked wrong. Then I discovered the Roundhouse cars, swapped all the trucks over from the beer cans, and I was happy; I finally had tank cars that looked somewhat realistic and could be backed up over a #4 switch. It's pretty amazing how far Atlas has progressed in twenty years however, or even less, since that LSIX car has been in my possession for at least six or seven years, and it blows away anything I ever "tuned" with brass detail parts. The entire brake mechanism is there, all the handrails are precisely to scale, I cannot find a single fault with it. To quote an old ad slogan, Atlas, you've come a long way baby!