Other than the Canadian roads and Santa Fe, which other railroads had chop-nose Geeps? It's a loaded question, because I need to know if I can hope for chop-nose Geep, or if I need to pay top dollar for a LL Canadian jobbie and then strip and custom paint it.
SP had several GP9s produced with low noses. I modeled a phase III by using a Life-Like GP18 and backdating it with a Gold Medal Models set.
Well, for starters: </font> Illinois Central/Illinois Central Gulf, with all those GP7s and GP9s rebuilt & chopped at their Paducah (KY) shops. Lots of them went to other railroads, shortline and regional alike (See: Iowa Interstate)</font> Chicago North Western, most of them rebuilt at the ex-CGW shops in Oelwein, IA)</font> Conrail, which ran both chopped and unchopped GP8s and GP10s</font> BN had a handful</font> At least one shortline railroad, the Kiamichi, chopped the short hoods on their hi-nose GP7s and GP9s. They even chopped the short hoods on five ex-Conrail GP10s set up for long-hood operation, and had to set everything in the cab around for short-hood-forward running.</font> I'm sure there are others, but these are the ones that come to mind.
IC/ICG had an extensive rebuild progamme for GP7's and GP9's creating the famous Paducah-builts (they even did a batch of SD20's as part of the same programme). BN also did a small group of chop-nose GP10's from GP7's, plus a handful of wreck rebuilds. Chopping the nose isn't too hard at all, William. I've done several by cutting out the unneeded section. If you are after the EMD 'kit' sloped nose, then a LL GP18 or 20 would be a perfect candidate for donating the nose. It will be cheaper than sourcing a Canadian model. I have a page somewhere that has the info on it but I'm in the process of rearranging the webspace before the ISP does it for me!
Seaboard Coast Line - The Family Lines also did a bunch of GP7's and 9's, similar to ICG's conversion. One even appeared on the Seaboard System calendar! So there's three more road names.
So, if I get a new Atlas GP-7, what do I buy for the short hood? Correct me if I'm wrong, but that would be a longer nose than the "normal" short hood, right?
BN chopped many units. The GP10s received the treatment durring conversion Many GP9s were chopped Some SD9s got chopped
Western Maryland had several chop nosed Geeps. Even after the chop their noses were higher than normal. WM Geeps
Here's a picture I picked up on the internet a while ago (author unknown, so I can't give proper credit): It shows a nose longer than say a GP35 or 38, and of course the cab assembly looks like it has slightly different proportions... Not a trivial modeling challenge, in other words
The nose will obviously be the same length as it was before chopping, but the height will obviously be different. When I set about chopping noses on several of my HO diesels, I made the first cut on the short hood at about the height of the handrails, and the second cut at just below the top of the hood. This left the numberboards & headlight assembly, and so I cut off the extra plastic. I fashioned a window front on the new cab from a single piece of sheet styrene, glued it onto the front of the cab, and then glued the numberboard/headlight assembly. I filled the gap with some body putty, and sanded the whole thing to smooth & rounds it all off. That Santa Fe chopnose Geep is using the "Topeka cab", so named because it was built at Santa Fe's Topeka shops. It was first used on the CF7 rebuilds, and wound up on GP7R rebuilds. ICG rebuilt some locomotives into thee so-called GP11s, which used the same type of cab as found on, say, a GP38. ALso, the SD20 rebuilds were done in the same fashion, cab-wise (although the short hood was kept the same length).
William, the nose of the 7 and 9 series locos is longer than those of the 30 and up. The GP20 and SD24 were the last of the standard long short hoods (which brings to mind Atlas's low hood SD24 body as a possible source). Have a look at this page to give you an idea of how I went about chopping the short hood for one project: http://www.pnc.com.au/~audiosat/models/projects/tcwgp10.htm It may give you the inspiration to try one. Get an Atlas GP7 body, or two, and practice. Also, the same deal was used for initially for TCW 402 but I salvaged the numberboards and used them on the modified original GP7 cab, done in similar fashion to what Bob suggested above. http://www.pnc.com.au/~audiosat/models/modtcw402.htm
Here is a chopped nose BN SD9 I did. I bought a SD9 and a SD24 low nose. I used the frame and cab front from the SD24 and the SD9 shell for the rest. The SD9 was then converted into a C&S high nose.
Here is a GP10. Made it from a GP7. Used a GP20 cab and ground down the front part of the frame to fit under the low nose.
very nice work, Tony, very nice! The SD9 looks a treat. Is the SD24 body readily available as a spare from Atlas?
Not that I know of. Atlas generally doesn't get a good supply of spares until the second run. I bought an entire Atlas SD24 since it has the same wheelbase as the SD9. I also needed the sill for another SD9 project. The low short hood on the SD24 is of the GP20 type so it isn't good for any of the conversions. I just ended up chopping the SD9 high hood and filling in the numberboards.
