The Bachmann Train Set Caboose

Fellow layout-blogger John R recently put up a post that showed, among other things, a Bachmann train set caboose from the 1980s repainted for the Long Island MTA. This reminded me of how useful these early-day Bachmann items actually are. I went looking for what history I could find of the Bachmann cars on the web. The best I could come up with was some catalog pages on the hoseeker site, where the earliest reference seems to be in the 1980 catalog.

Like any of the inexpensive, train-set market cars from this era, these need to have the trucks and couplers replaced, and often they need repainting. But as visitors here know, even the "junkiest" AHM, Tyco, or Bachmann cars often have real possibilities, and they can be found at swap meets very inexpensively, especially if they're missing trucks or whatever, which serious modelers will toss and replace anyhow. As it happens, I have one in "mint" condition from some years-ago swap meet, where I couldn't have paid more than a buck so for it.

This is actually one of the big surprises of early Bachmann -- this is a halfway decent model of a Burlington NE-12 waycar. These were built by the CB&Q Havelock Shops shops as CB&Q 13525-13559 in 1954 and CB&Q 13560-13589 in 1960. Here's a photo of CB&Q 13544 from rrpicturearchives:

They were renumbered as BN 10331-10360 and 10391-10445. Over the years, I've upgraded and repainted a number of these.

John R's caboose struck me as a really good stand-in for the MTA ex-Illinois Central cars on the Long Island. I was able to wangle a set of the decals he'd gotten from a friend from John. As it happens, I have a Bachmann body that I'd already painted yellow, and I can simply paint the roof and underbody blue to match the MTA scheme, so this will be a fun project when i get the decals:

These cars no longer appear in the regular Bachmann line, although the Chattanooga train set apparently contains one. I've always wondered why Bachmann didn't upgrade them with better trucks and couplers, and maybe a separate roof walk, with better paint. But they'd probably want $50 for them, so it's probably better to track them down at swap meets and do a little work.

A Closer Look At The Walthers Mainline SD60M

The UP's SD60Ms have long been a favorite of mine, and until recently they were very common in Southern California on hauler trains and manifests. Here's a 2015 shot that shows them in their final state, including heavy tagging:

Interestingly, though, 2456 kept its red frame stripe. Here's the Walthers model, with the only change being weathering on the air intake vents:

The Walthers SD60 and SD60M are easy to convert to DCC, and they benefit from it, because they have only one flywheel to leave room for the speaker. By changing CV 3 and CV 4 to 1, you can improve the loco's momentum. But this time, I also decided to try out the Digitrax PX108-2 Power Xtender, which is a capacitor that allows a decoder to power over dead or dirty track. There's enough space on the chassis to install a Digtrax DH126 on the factory 9-pin plug, and the Power Xtender has a plug that in turn fits into the DH126.

However, the Xtender is a fairly big item, and it was a challenge to find a place for it under the shell. As it turns out, the DC non-sound chassis has an insert that's meant to cover the space for the speaker:

If you unscrew two screws at the top of the insert, you can remove it and find a space for the Xtender:

Here's the Xtender tacked into place with Scotch Magic tape. The decoder itself and the excess wires are also held down with tape to prevent any pinching or dislocation when the shell is installed.

Here is the whole chassis:

And here is an example of how the Xtender works:

I left the headlight on and picked the loco up off the track. As you can see, the headlight stays lit. So far, testing indicates that the capacitor will provide power for varying lengths of time depending on the load. The headlight alone will stay lit for several minutes, but an LED doesn't draw much current. The Xtender will keep the motor running for several seconds, depending on the speed the loco was running at the time the current was turned off. If the loco was running at minimum speed, it will stop within a very short interval. If it is going at medium speed, it will run for a foot or so. I have more testing to do to figure out how best to use this feature.

Regarding details, the Walthers Mainline marque is aimed at the lower-cost-but-acceptable market, equivalent to Bachmann, Athearn Roundhouse, or ScaleTrains Operator. These locos are hard to distinguish from higher-priced ones at the three-foot layout viewing range. The biggest detail discrepancy with this UP unit is that it has a headlight mounted above the cab windows, where the prototype UP units have them on the nose.

I added an Athearn EMD PTC antenna array to the cab roof:

Here's a prototype view of a PTC array:

These have been installed within the past several years and are generally contemporary with yellow sill stripes on UP.

Tier 4

I ordered a ScaleTrains ES44T4, but unlike the guys who've posted about it on YouTube, I got the DC-only version with the idea of putting a control-only DCC decoder in it. I like sound in moderate doses, but too many sound units on a layout at once can drive me up the walls. This brought me to some interesting features of the model. Below is the chassis with a Digitrax DH166MT installed:

This is the first one of these I've installed, and I had several false starts until I went to the instruction sheet and learned I was trying to put it in upside-down. So I got it to work, but I found that it lights the ditch lights separately, left light is F1, right light is F2. I will need to remap F2 to work with F1 to turn them both on at once. I also noted that there are LEDs available to light the number boards, but they aren't controllable from Digitrax function keys.

Going to the ScaleTrains product manual, I found that there are DIP switches on the PC board that enable certain lighting features for the recommended ESU decoder. On the DCC-ready version, the DIP switches are off, and ScaleTrains recommends leaving them off for any but an ESU decoder. This is the sort of thing that no reviews I've seen so far have mentioned. For now, it doesn't bother me that I can't light the number boards, since most models don't control them separately.

Most reviews, in fact, like those in MR, cover only sound versions of locos or their DC-only counterparts. Gotchas like what you see here probably aren't worth the space in the magazine, but this is one reason I'm probably going to drop MR when my sub is up for renewal. If I have to find stuff I need for myself, the mag isn't worth it. Someone may one day try using a Digitrax decoder on this thing with the DIP switches on and find it works OK, but so far, nobody seems to think this is a service anyone would pay for.

Here's the loco with the shell on:

I especially like the PTC antenna array on the cab roof. Here's a prototype loco from a similar angle:

Speaking of Tier 4s, I finally got a shot of an EMD Tier 4 yesterday. UP calls this an SD70AH-T4C. This loco is from the series 9062-9096 delivered May through August of this year.

SD60 Update

I found this video on YouTube. The video itself was taken within the past week or two, and at about 1:50, it shows a UP coal train in the Twin Cities with two SD60 standard cab locos as units 2 and 3:

I asked the guy who posted this on YouTube, and he said the UP SD60s were still active in the Twin Cities. That focused me on the Walthers UP SD60 I got recently. With these locos apparently still in service, I decided to add an air conditioner to the cab:

I still haven't been able to find a photo of a UP SD60 standard cab with the lightning stripe, though, and not all UP SD60s with yellow sill stripes have air conditioners.

i also got a SOO SD60, which I find is easy to consist with Bachmann SD40-2s:

Testing New Power

I got some new heavy power recently. The DM&IR has always been one of my favorites, and Broadway Limited has issued a new run of RSD-15s:

Actually modeling the DM&IR can be a problem unless you have a whole layout focused on ore operation, which I don't. The scenery in the area is pretty unique, but the lineside detail is easily recognizable, so parts of any layout can suggest the DM&IR.

This part of my layout, the Bay City-Jaques area, is less finished, but I've been doing test runs of the RSD-15 through it to be sure it does OK on the curved switches. This will be the closest to DM&IR territory on the layout.

I also tested the RSD-15 and the new Bachmann CP SD40-2 on the Walthers bascule bridge: