1980s And 1990s Bachmann

Bachmann really began to improve its products in the mid to late 1980s. According to the HO Scale Trains Resource, Bachmann went to a single power truck for its diesel loco offerings in the late 1970s, and although the body die work was often acceptable, the pancake motor basically put Bachmann in the "junk" category at the time. I think I probably began to recognize that things were changing with the upgraded Spectrum line and the 8-40C of the late 1980s.

Model Railroader published an article, "Union Pacific Dash 8-40C" by David A. Bontrager in its June 1991 issue. He added a number of details and touched up the paint and weathering. I did three of these at the time, one each of the three road numbers they offered. Here's one of the ones I did following his MR article at the time:

The flywheel-equipped fore-and-aft all-wheel drive train was a big improvement, and the loco was a smooth runner. I wound up getting a number of these, but the major difficulty was the split frame, which made DCC installation difficult. The original Bachmann Plus SD45s of the 1990s were good runners with acceptable layout-quality detail, but the split frame also made DCC installation a problem. (Apparently Bachmann later upgraded this model to a Spectrum version with a non-split frame and a DCC compatible 8-pin socket. I haven't seen any of these.)

I picked up a number of the SD45s in the 1990s, too. You could get them at discount, as I recall, in the $30-40 range. I detailed a number of them and started with others, but eventually I lost interest. Just recently a German model railroad YouTuber whose channel is named hd springer talked about getting one of the vintage Bachmann SD45s and converting the split frame to DCC. I made a comment and said I wanted to follow what he did. He answered and posted this video:

His method is remarkably easy, a couple hours work for each loco. Unfortunately, I still need to get some N or Z size decoders to fit in the limited space inside the body, but I'll have some locos ready to solder them in when they come. I took his conversion a little farther and kitbashed the factory PC board to allow easy solder-in install of hardwire decoders:

Here's a Union Pacific version that I added some details to. The rewiring for DCC has been done.

Another project now is a Spectrum B23-7. This actually has a one-piece frame, but the wiring isn't too different from Bachmann split-frame locos. I updated the wiring on this following the hd springer YouTube and will install a decoder when it arrives. The paint on many of these locos is so good that it's hard to tell them from Atlas or other more expensive locos at normal layout viewing distances. I plan to rewire my 8-40Cs and install DCC in them as well.