Lockdown Projects

With a lot of enforced time on my hands, I;m turning to projects that had been on the back burner. It's an opportunity to get some of these done. The first is an Atlas Roco 1990s run FP7. Like the Austrian and early Chinese Alco switchers, these have good weight and are good runners, but they aren't easy to convert to DCC. I went looking around the web and found some hints, but I eventually came up with my own formula.

I retained the PC board but cut the traces to isolate the track pickup leads from the motor and headlight leads. Then I soldered the wires from the Digitrax harness to the isolated traces on the PC board. I left the incandescent headlight in place, mostly because I didn't have a resistor for an LED. Here's the chassis with the decoder installed:

Here's the shell remounted. About 20 years ago, I had added lift rings, grab irons, and a new horn to the roof. I also added Microscale decals for the step kick plates. This loco had a fair amount of running on my layout before I converted to DCC. It really isn't bad looking at all for a vintage unit. The die work is mostly from before 1980 and is one of the earliest Atlas Austria locos. However, the chassis is all new as of 1990.

Here's how the incandescent headlight lights up.

Another project I got to this week was a white metal conversion kit from the 1980s that was meant to convert an Athearn bluebox boxcar kit to a Bangor and Aroostook woodchip car. I had completed about 95% of the work but put the project on a back burner. I had all the items on hand to complete it, which included Highball Graphics decals and a bottle of old Floquil Jade Green.

I got the paint on over the past week, but normally you have to wait until all the volatiles evaporate from the paint, and for some reason, it's taken quite a while for the smell to go away. Hopefully I can get the decals on in the next few days.