McCloud River Railroad reviews:

Scale Trains McCloud River Railroad #39



EMD's designed and intended their SD38 and SD38-2 locomotives for niche markets where tractive effort outweighed horsepower requirements, and as such sales of both models remained low, amounting to only 108 SD38s built between 1969-1971 and 90 SD38-2s built between 1972-1979, not counting some export variations. The relatively small number of prototypes has limited the availability of both locomotives in the model railroad market; Rail Power Products produced a SD38 shell that later got picked up and added to Athearn's line, and over the last decade and a half or so Athearn has released three runs of McCloud River SD38's and has a fourth now apparently scheduled for release sometime in 2026. The SD38-2 has been even more scarce, limited in plastic to a single offering from Kato released around 2005, but Kato never released it painted as McCloud River #39.

Hope for a McCloud River #39 model raised in June 2016 when Intermountain Railway Company announced plans to make a SD38-2 available in HO scale. Their initial group of road names did not include the MR #39, but shortly afterwards Daylight Trains, a retail shop that only existed on Facebook, made a splash when they released a flyer indicating they had made special arrangements to have 100 of the forthcoming Intermountain models painted as the McCloud River #39. Daylight worked with a couple established hobby shops to help with the marketing and distribution. Unfortunately, Daylight ceased to exist as a company by 2018, and nine and a half years (as of December 2025) after announcing their SD38-2 Intermountain has yet to actually make any models, and doesn't appear to be any closer to doing so than they were in 2016.

In November 2021 Scale Trains, a relatively young company in the model railroad industry, announced it would make SD38-2 models as part of their "Rivet Counter" line. Their first run of SD38-2s released in 2022 did not include the McCloud unit, but the company indicated plans to offer one, and that became a reality when they released plans for their second run in mid-2025. The McCloud River #39 arrived in the United States in late November. I placed a pre-order for one of the new models when Scale Trains made the announcement, and it arrived on 2 December.

Scale Trains has developed a reputation of producing excellent running well detailed models, and their McCloud River #39 is no exception. The model runs exceptionally well out of the box. I have never taken the DCC plunge, and as such I have a standard DC model that is equipped with directional lighting, including number boards and running lights above the trucks. A good part of the product manual included with the model describes the various sound and light effects programming options available on the Sound and DCC equipped models. The paint matches closely to what Athearn used on their last run of McCloud River SD38s

While these models are impressive, I did note several small detail errors. First, the real #39 had a speed recorder cable mounted to the rear axle of the front truck on the fireman's side of the locomotive, on the model it is mounted to the front axle. Shortly after arriving in McCloud the railroad installed rotary beacons on top of the cab roof and at the end of the long hood, while the one of the rear of the locomotive is properly located the one on the cab roof is too far forward, it should have been located back towards the center of the cab. Scale Trains also got the location of the radio antenna slightly off, on the model it is located on the centerline of the cab while on the prototype it is offset to the right side of the cab. On my straight DC model the beacon lights are constantly lit, and while that's a price I pay for being behind the times I would have preferred they be dark if making them flashing on a non-DCC equipped model was not an option. These are all relatively small errors and do not materially detract from the overall model.

Overall these are fantastic models, and Scale Trains is to be thanked and highly commended for finally bringing this model to market. It fills a large hole in the McCloud model market. I hope they offer the model as the McCloud Railway #39 someday, along with maybe all-weather cab windows. Thanks you, Scale Trains!

Now, on to some photos of the newly released Scale Trains #39.


We'll start with a builder's photo of the "real" #39.


Scale Trains #39 from roughly the same angle. The #39 left EMD with the steps, snowplow, and handrails painted black, the railroad added the yellow stripes on the plow, bottom steps, and handrails shortly after it arrived on the road.


Right side view of the model.


Left side view of the model.


A three-quarters view of the right side of the locomotive.


Looking down at the roof of the model.


Another view of the right side of the model.

Front view of the model. The lettering next to the coupler wore off by the early 1980s and was not re-applied. The yellow stripes applied to the plow also wore off by the early to middle 1980s, at which time the railroad repainted them orange.


Rear of the model.


While hard to photograph, the model does have a full cab interior. This view is looking through the engineer's window.


Looking in through the window on the fireman's side.
Long-time friend of this site Carlos Furcal also got one of the new Scale Trains models, shortly after getting his he ran it on the Rogue Valley Model Railroad Club's layout in Medford, Oregon. He sent along the following photos of the model looking very much at home on the layout, first with a general freight and then with a cut of sugar beet hoppers. Thanks, Carlos!