DCC Installed In A Bachmann 8-40C

I finally got DCC installed in one of my Bachmann Union Pacific 8-40Cs. This has been an all-around challenge.

Although these are mechanically almost identical to the SD45s that I talked about in my last post but one, they turn out to be noisier and not as smooth running. The disassembly for DCC is also more difficult, because the screws that hold the split frame halves together seem to be good for only one assembly, and removing them strips the spacers, so the frame halves need a generous amount of CA glue to put them back together. But it all worked.

Now I'm speed matching this unit to a recent Walthers Mainline SD60M. It's very slow in comparison, but it needs a good jolt to get it going at speed step 1, so I wound up setting CV 2, starting voltage, to 30, and CV 6, mid range voltage, to 250. Meanwhile, on the Walthers unit, I set CV5, top speed voltage, to 80. This seems to have them running fairly equally, though there isn't a whole lot of speed adjustment available.

These locos are 30 years old and had a lot of running on the 1.0 version of my layout at another location. They're pretty beat up as a result of that and 25 years or so out of service, but I think they can be restored. You can see that some of the decals have peeled off, the handrails are a little twisted, and some paint has chipped. Also, they ran fine on layout 1.0, but the plow is a little low on this one, and I'm still having to trim the bottom with a Dremel.

Here's UP 9061 at Caliente with the Pizza Man slogan.

Here's UP 9189 at West Colton in 2004, with ditch lights added and the rooftop details that are on my as-delivered model removed.

Here's 9227 in its final form, with lightning stripe on the upper gray area, yellow frame stripe, and tagged, in 2015.

These were built in 1987 and 1988. A separate group of 77 C40-8s came from CNW in that merger but were sold to CN after 2010.