Athearn Genesis SD70ACU Review & Testing

Full review and standardized testing of the 2022 run HO scale EMD/Progress Rail SD70ACU by Athearn Genesis.
Locomotive weight: 678 grams / 23.9 oz
Drawbar Pull: 120 grams / 4.23 oz
Drawbar Push: 113.3 grams / 3.99 oz

MSRP:
DC/Silent - $249.98 USD
DCC/Soundtraxx Tsunami II - $339.98 USD

This model was announced in October 2020 and delivered in January 2022 in 5 different paint schemes, 10 unique road numbers with Soundtraxx Tsunami II DCC/sound or DC/DCC ready:

Canadian Pacific "Navy" Military Tribute - 7022
Canadian Pacific "Army Arid" Military Tribute - 7021
Canadian Pacific "Heritage Script" - 7010, 7013
Canadian Pacific Red/Golden Beaver - 7000, 7006
NS "Black/Thoroughbred" - 7230, 7257, 7293, 7312

Prototype Information:
Starting in 2018, Canadian Pacific announced a plan to acquire 30 SD70ACU units from EMD/Progress Rail using their laid up fleet of SD90MAC locomotives as core units. That number was later increased from 30 to 60. They also acquired 2 ex-Union Pacific units, in 2019.
In November of 2019, CP painted 5 SD70ACU’s into 5 separate military inspired paint schemes. These units commemorate the Army, Navy, Air Force and a special tribute locomotive for D-Day wearing camo and the Allied invasion stripes used on June 6, 1944.

Canadian Pacific Features
Rebuilt units have added rear ditch lights per prototype
Raised walkways for snow management
Dual trainlines per CP prototype
Air line bracket on front truck
Nathan K3 horn
Nose mounted headlight per CP practice
CP style front plow
CP style PTC antenna array
Military unit cab details - no blue flag brackets and center mounted nose door lock
The most authentic art possible; all artwork created in cooperation with Canadian Pacific and all colors matched to official color chips

7021 Specific Features
Army Arid Regions - This Canadian Pacific locomotive is Desert Sand with black markings
painted in a simplified design inspired by modern fighting vehicles used in recent conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. The road numbers and lettering are applied using a modernized “Army” stencil font for authenticity.

Detail - Very good. Superb artwork and paint job. Athearn did an excellent job recreating this one of a kind paint scheme right down to the smallest detail such as the separation lines on the road number stencil. Fine scale handrails which are nice and straight. Comparable to the recently released Dash 9 but the ACU's do not have roller bearing trucks. 9/10

Operation/Drive train - Nice slow crawl speed, smooth, quiet operation out of the box. There was a bit of oil on the underside of the trucks probably from factory lubrication and testing. 8.5/10

Weight - Weighing in at 678 grams / 23.9 oz, a full 136 grams heavier than the ES44AC, 56 grams heavier than the Dash 9's, these things are brutes. Very impressive that they were able to get another 56 grams into it compared to the Dash 9. For context, this thing outweighs the old Kato SD90/43MAC which weighed in at 611 grams and is second to only the recently released Athearn Genesis SD90/43MACH at a whopping 722 grams / 25.4 oz 9.75/10

Sound - The horn and prime mover are too loud out of the box. You will have to go into the EQ and turn down the horn and bell. There are a couple options for K3 horns which can be changed to closer match the CP prototype. I also like the alternative EQ in the function 9 spot where it immediately cuts the volume in half. 8.0/10

Lighting - Headlights, ditch lights, ground lights and number boards are all LED. I found the ditch lights to be quite a bit brighter than the headlights but I think this can be adjusted within the decoder. No step lighting when comparing to the Dash 9. 8.75/10

OVERALL SCORE: 8.8 / 10
The art work and paint job on this locomotive is stunning, even more so in person than on the video. I am probably a bit bias when it comes to these as I am a huge fan of these military tribute engines that CP painted. I think these paint schemes look fantastic on the EMD units and Athearn has done a phenomenal job recreating them in 1:87. This unit is incredibly heavy and will be an absolute tank on the layout, watch out for broken drawbars/knuckles! Once the volume levels were adjusted and EQ tweaked to favour the low end, they are nice sounding units. The LED lighting is nice and bright. It doesn't have all the extra bells and whistles that the recent dash 9 has, such as rolling bearing caps, step/ground lighting but I feel it more than makes up for that with its flawless, one of a kind paint job and extremely heavy chassis.

For comparison, all of my other review and tests of HO scale locomotives can be found at this link:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list...

Look for the companion review in Model Railroad News:
https://modelrailroadnews.com/

Horizon Hobby:
https://www.horizonhobby.com/trains/