My Dark Diesel Side

[Schraddel]

The next chapter.
Long ago pre-confirmed, a long time waited for delivery, in summer 2016 at last delivered to my preferred model railroad dealer:

Altlas H0 Classic ALCO RSD-4 in ATSF zebra stripe livery. I ordered her in DC version to avoid hassle with ESU sound decoders. And no John Deere agricultural tractor sound wanted inside here
Analog drive tests resulted a smooth running motor with no cogging, so there is no need to replace the motor.





Instead the new Soundtraxx Econami Diesel with MTC 21 connector was plugged in. It has a pretty nice ALCO 244 engine sound which really sounds like an ALCO 244 Diesel engine and not like a tractor while plowing.
One of the weight has to be sacrificed to make room for the speaker box. This was in my grab box and have had to be slightly modified to fit unter the bonnet. Also the LED was substituted with a smaller type.

As this is Atlas Classic line, the modes are somewhat generic. In common the ALCO RSD-4/5s are designed to operate long end front. Not so Santa Fe which ordered them to operate short end front. This has influence to the arrangement of the cab windows.


To explain this her the photo of an ALCO cab interior. Front is on the right side of the photo, engineers seat is in the foreground. Here is a two pane window in the cab's sidewall arranged. On the fireman's side there also is the seat for the front brakeman. And here for the third seat a thre pane window is arranged.
That are clearly visible details even out of 2 meters [TM] distance viewed.
So what to do without destroying the painting?
Simply turning the cab around of 180° does not work because of the then reverse diagonal stripes and the battery box on the running board.
But it will be possible to turn a part of the cab 180°.





To enable this the cab was cut into 3 pieces. Here i used a very thin buzz saw blade, it has app. 0.1mm thickness. The cut was done in a machine which rotated at very moderate rpm's to avoid melting of the plastic material.
The cut was done just below the windows were the stripes were ending. The window glass insert was kept in place to give more stability during cutting.
Following the lower cab sides were reattached to their "right" sides by glueing.





The cab after glueing, the cut is clearly visible. A new bore for the end of the railing on this side has to be made too.





The loco was rocking a little bit sidewards, not much, but a little too much for me. So it was completely disassembled.
This photo shows a) the MTC21 connector and b) the balanced flywheels to avoid droning noises.





One of the trucks get it's bolsters completely filed down. A stack of washers will replace the original bolsters.
Note the the axle spacing of the 3-motor trock is unsymetricla, but the pivoting is symetrical. There for the somewhat excentric lookalike.





The other truck. The bolsters on the trucks were a little bit too low to take really action, thus causing the rocking.
To eliminate this two thin stripes of 0.3mm styrene sheet were glued onto the underside of the main frame, just left and right of the pivot point.





The trucks were completely disassembled.


Continued on next posting