Hi Joe Thanks for the shots of the SD40-2 chassis. I didn’t expect you to . . . but wow. Very kind. What is the thing on top of the chassis, is that a PCB for the lighting or something to do with the decoder? I am wondering how high the chassis is with that in place, or if it can be easily removed if you are prepared to sacrifice either lighting or DCC ? I guess I am wondering about the potential of this chassis for conversions. Cheers Ben
EMD hood doors in Z A related query to my recent one about the SD40-2 chassis, Joe will know this but others may too . . . How does one create the squarish indentations on EMD loco doors in Z ? It looks like these, along with the vertical scribing to simulate the doors, are the main distinctive features of EMD hoods that I can see when looking at a molded GP38-2 shell I was given a while back. I was looking into ways of doing this, using clear styrene as the construction material. I imagine one might stamp them but not anyone makes a square section of brass that small, 0.5mm maximum! Cheers Ben
Ben, the post and the pcb can be replace, but you will have to wire a power pick up to the motor. Here is a picture of Chris GP35 heavy. He completely remove the post and pcb to add more weigh.
Hi Ben, Sorry for not getting back to you sooner. I think you have the $64,000 question there. In larger scales it's easy to cut those off existing shells, or in the case of HO scale, buy injection molded parts as replacements. Dave and I and a few others generally do what they used to do in HO Scale by kit bashing and cutting and pasting sections of the shell together to get as close as possible. I am working on some Alco shells at home and have done some photo etched sides, but the look is different. I've also taken a chassis and made a flat mold of one of the side panels and did a squash mold to get doors. This has promise, but takes patience. Another technique I've used in the past was to make decals of the outlines of the doors and the latches and applied them to the surface. I did this in N Scale years ago when I was working at Disney. On darker cars, black works fine and most folks had to run their fingers on the surface of the car to tell wether or not the detail was raised. I think I'm going to do this on the RS 11's in SP, the effect is pretty striking. The beauty of this system is most everyone has access to a regular ink printer, and using decal stock, and a basic drawing program you can do just about anything. I'm currently working on a mock up of a GP60 and some details like vents and grills will be added this way. I'm a 3' modeler, but try my best to do things you can get up close to and appreciate. Hope this helps some. Cheers Joe MTL
Thanks Joe I occasionally notice the business cards that have raised lettering and wondered if some of these may present an answer to getting a more ‘three dimensional’ look to hood doors. However, you may be correct that decaling is the right way. It seems Yuji went down this path for his SD40T-2s and SD45s, although the shots on the web don’t really enable you to see how it worked. I certainly have plans for the locos that would enable such decaling, here is an example: X 45 - 54 diagram It could be that making a small hole with a pin and then squaring it by inserting an x-acto hobby blade and going from side to side and up to down might get something more squarish. Doing this about 50 times doesn’t really excite me though! Thanks again. Ben
I've done silk screening on flat surfaces and then overpainted them so the relief was very faint, this might work. Getting Stainless Screen might be problematic to get details fine enough. You mentioned Yuji's models, is there a link to see these? Joe
Can I ask what the height of the SD40-2 from rail to top of the chassis is ? In millimetres if possible . . . there are a couple of Aussie beasts the SD might have potential for, but not sure . . . Cheers Ben
It's the exact same height as the GP-35. I don't have access to one here at home (go figure), but can get you that info tomorrow. Joe
