Greetings, A while back I picked up a Z Shorty chassis to see what all the talk was about. I really didn’t intend to do much with it but I decided to clean out some of the junk from the scrap bin and build a diminutive boxcab diesel from brass and styrene. There is no real story behind it, I just built something like a more modern AGEIR, and I gave it an EMD builder’s plate. Perhaps a competing design. I wanted it to feel small and cramped, so it’s no taller than a boxcar. I wanted a little color so I went with a black and orange scheme with simple lettering, and an anthracite roof.
A single-ended boxcab is definitely a flavorful model. Even though the trucks are designed for a Japanese model, I think they work well here. They look a bit like a cross between Blunt trucks and Blomberg B. Those decals must be super tiny, especially the F on the bottom sill. Are the Headlights functional? The dual sealed-beams also sound like something the SP would do.
Knowing my favorite railroad, they were talented and had a fantastic shop to build stuff, and they were frugal. This is just the sort of thing D&RGW might have built in say, Burnham Shops for NG system use. Short of nose stripes similar to that applied to GP7/9s, or even the tiny NG switcher D&RGW 50 (http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/locoPicture.aspx?id=33277) from Durango, this looks very plausible for D&RGW. It looks as if it would have been a first-generation experiment for dieselization of the NG.
I thought about doing the stripes, and I almost did, but it seemed like it might feel too modern. I went with the simple lettering, no herald or speed lettering either. What I had in mind was the WP’s simplified schemes they did. I’d I build another, I’ll definitely do the black stripes. I chose the number based on the 50, and 52 looked nice.
