Another Bachmann Western Pacific GP7

A while ago, I posted about getting a Bachmann Western Pacific GP7 and installing an NCE BACH-DSL decoder. The Bachmann GP7s and GP9s have gotten to be among my favorites -- with replacement decoders, they're very quiet, smooth runners. They're very rugged layout-quality locos, and with careful shopping, they can be found at very reasonable prices. I found another WP GP7 at a price too good to pass up.

The biggest detail issue with WP locos is that those ordered in the 1950s and 60s had steam-era style barrel headlights. As I understand it, this was to allow WP to use up its inventory of steam-era light bulbs. The model has the much more common twin vertical lights. However, at around the time of the color scheme change to overall green with orange lettering in 1970, WP began to replace the large headlights. I do have one photo of a GP7 in orange and silver with the new style headlight.

Eventually, it seems as though no two orange-and-silver locos had exactly the same paint scheme on WP, with variations in striping, lettering, and what parts were orange. However, it seems as though no prototype GP7 on th WP had the silver stripe in the middle of the short hood. As far as I'm concerned, these are layout-quality locos. While I've started some weathering, there's clearly scope for a lot more.

While the loco number appears on the cab side near the WP logo, it's so small, it's not worth renumbering there. I did renumber the loco to 707 from the factory 709 in the end number boards. On this loco, I saw some bleedthrough from the headlight into the shell. I fixed this with a small piece of aluminum foil inside the shell, held in with CA glue.

I do expect a lot more traffic to the East Coast on the Penn Central car movement posts to go via WP. The extra GP7 should be very helpful.