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!