Back To My Purgatory Box

Here are some more old, and very old, projects I've pulled out. I mentioned not long ago that I had some Athearn wide body units in the box (actually various drawers and piles of stuff). I ran into one when I was looking for something else, an Athearn bluebox SD45 from the late 1970s:

Guys had to put quite a bit of work into these to make them acceptable. This one has had work done on the cab, the roof top, the radiator intakes, hand brake, and the lights. I pulled it out and cleaned it up, but a big obstacle remains, the chassis:

This is pure 1970s Athearn, although they added the sintered metal flywheels late in the decade. Think disco. A big problem is the plastic motor mounts, which do little more than put a loose hold on things, so the motor rocks back and forth. This, I discovered long ago, leads to trouble. I think I still have a spare A-Line repower kit, but I'm on the fence as to whether it's worth the effort. Stay tuned.

I started serious rebiulding on the prewar work car I got at a swap meet and talked about here. This is how it looked when I got it last April:

As the mood strikes me, I've started serious teardown. Tender bodies on flats like these mostly just carried water for the work outfit, so I needed to get rid of the coal load. I also needed to sand the hand-painted lettering off.

I got the tender deck cleaned off and put on sanding sealer to get rid of any wood grain:

I cut openings in the end sills and added coupler pockets. The original never had couplers, so the guy never ran it.

The car is older than I am, so I'm not going to try to make it more than it is, but I think I can turn it into something that's fun to have on the layout and even operate.

Near the SP SD45 in the purgatory box was this Athearn carbody, something I started work on in the late 1970s but lost interest in. I cleaned it up, finished the decal work, and gave it a coat of flat finish:

Back then, I had a project of removing the roof walks and upper ladders from a number of bluebox and IHC cars. Be nice to finally finish some!

Good Train Videos, Good Music

Taking A Close Look At A Bachmann CP SD40-2

Many modelers have improved opinions of Bachmann products over the past 15 or 20 years, certainly since their Spectrum range, and more so in the past 10 years or so with improved paint work and mechanical and electrical upgrades to their standard line. I've been a fan of their RS-3, S-2/4, and GP7/9 for quite a while. Recently I got a CN SD40-2 and was impressed with its potential. Just the other week, I went ahead and ordered a CP version.

The first two photos are straight out of the box, with just a quick test run to be sure it works:

The paint is smoothly applied and opaque. The lettering is very clear and opaque.

The paint scheme on this loco, according to this site, is Action Red, 5" nose/cab front stripes, small multimark. However, the site isn't clear on exactly which units got this scheme. After 5718 in 1975, 8-inch nose stripes were used, with a small multimark. 5937 would have been delivered in a later scheme, with 8-inch nose stripes and a large multimark. Based on the info I see, I can't rule out some units being repainted in the 5-inch nose and cab stripe scheme.

I popped the body off and hit the chassis and air intakes on the body with grimy black. Looking at the chassis, I saw that the DCC version for this model is the full factory PC board. This does not support most NMRA speed control CVs and comes with a factory-default compulsory speed curve and momentum setting. This makes it impossible to match speed curves and consist the loco with other units. The best bet is to replace it with an NCE BACH-DSL decoder, which is designed to be a drop-in replacement for Bachmann DCC on board decoders.

Here's the loco put back together temporarily with the air intakes now painted black.

Another thing you can see here is that, although the site I linked above says the units with the small multimark had a red area above the height of the multimark on the rear of the long hood, the long hood end here is black and white all the way to the top. Again, I can't rule out that some units may have been painted this way.

Here's the Bachmann unit set next to an Athearn bluebox CP snoot behind it. The snoot has had some roof weathering done. The overall level of detail and proportions look very close.

Here's the bluebox snoot by itself, currently on a dummy chassis. Both the Athearn and Bachmann models are generic in their detail, and the actual CP units have many variations from these models. I'm using them as layout quality models. Bowser now offers models much closer to Canadian prototypes, and they're an option for people who want more accuracy, though of course at a higher price.

On my two bluebox units, I added Detail Associates Chessie-style pilots, which are close to the CP prototype.

The bluebox unit also has the black and white area extending to the top of the hood with the small multimark. Apparently the reflective dots seen on this unit weren't consistently applied to all units.

It slowly began to dawn on me in recent years that, although CP power was common on lines like Guilford's freight main, the former D&H, and the Conrail/NS Southern Tier, the SD40-2s ranged all over former Soo and Milwaukee territory, as well as on NS and Conrail trackage rights in many areas. Good units to have for my general interests.

This multimark CP scheme is out of production at Bachmann, but if you look, you can find them. They still offer later CP schemes. It's worth doing a thorough search for the best price on Bachmann locos, but I get the impression that Bachmann has increased its prices recently and is imposing greater price discipline on retailers. The SD40-2, if you can find it at prices between $50 and $75, is a very good value, especially with a good decoder.

Looking At My "Purgatory Box"

Fellow blogger and modeler John R has what he calls a "purgatory box", which is a place he puts older models that he obtained in his younger days in the hobby, but for various reasons has taken off the layout, maybe because the trucks and couplers are no longer up to standard, or the paint job is too toylike.

I realized I have something similar, but I never gave it a name. "Purgatory box" is a really good one! In my case, nearly everything in the box is an Athearn bluebox loco. Some of them are from the old wide body days of the 1970s. I spent a lot of time with those, but I haven't run them for a long time. I may well never bring them back.

More recent ones in my "purgatory box" are the newer, narrow-hood GP38-2s and SD40-2s. These were an advance, but I often gave up on them before I could put them into service on a real layout like the one I began in the late 1980s. Pickup was poor due to the old sintered metal wheels and metal strips that carried power to the motor. The coupler mounts needed a lot of rework before you could mount Kadees properly. The metal handrails were a bear to assemble. The huge HO diesel detail aftermarket grew up almost entirely because the Athearn bluebox locos needed so much work.

However, there are some candidates that can be put into service without too much effort. I seem to have gotten pretty far with them, but once better models from Atlas, Kato, and so forth turned up, I took the path of least resistance and put those into service first, just deferring work on the blueboxes. For 20 or more years.

The new Walthers Mainline Soo SD60 changed my priorities. I got more interested in the Soo in the 1990s, when MR ran a number of articles on the railroad, especially the Red Wing project layout in the December 1994 MR. Inspired by the article, which included early instructions on how to convert an Athearn loco to DCC, I got a bluebox Soo GP38-2. I finished detailing it back then, but set it aside. Nearly 25 years later, it's going into service.

It needs some paint touchup. I converted it to DCC:

One thing that confirmed my interest in the Soo Line was that, after CP became the designated operator of the D&H, Soo-CP power would run through onto Guilford, one of my favorite prototypes. The runthrough power was frequently Soo SD60s, as well as Soo and CP SD40-2s. But in the 1990s, there was no easy way to get to a SOO SD60, just the Rail Power Products body and Proto Power West chassis, and a lot of work. The new Walthers model has changed that!

Speaking of Proto Power West, they made "tweaked" Athearn chassis, with extra lead weight, can motors, wire pickup, and tuned mechanics. I have a lot of those in reserve.

The good thing about these was that in the days before DCC and speed matching, you could get an Athearn loco with a PPW chassis to run with an Atlas or Kato loco. The can motors also drew less current.

I have two CP "snoot" bluebox locos that won't be too hard to put into operation. This one, a dummy, will probably get the PPW chassis above, with a DCC decoder:

Here's a Soo SD40-2:

This one already has a bluebox chassis that's had new wheels and a PPW upgrade kit installed. Like a number of these, it was very close to being finished, but it was just a lot easier to get a new Atlas loco or whatever!

A lot of guys who did a lot of work with bluebox locos in the 1970s and 80s built up a surplus of aftermarket parts, expecting things never to change. But the locos that have been available since the 1990s are so much more detailed that a lot of the aftermarket parts will never be used. At least these projects are letting me work my way through my own surplus!