Building my CN/G&M Dash 9-44CW

[Catt]

Bought this big beast the year Athearn brought them out.I changed my primary scale (to N scale)the next year and this got put in a drawer and more or less forgot about it.Earlier this year I joined a multi scale club and decided I needed some real power for it.

While I was digging through the HO locos I still owned I discovered this way in the back of the drawer.I test run it and it ran like a new loco so this project got started.In 1997 there was a article in Model Railroading about building one of these.One of the sources for the cab was H&D Hobby Distributing inCalgary,Alberta,Canada. I did a Yahoo search not expecting anything good,but they are still there and they still have the cab.

Anyway here arec a couple pictures to show what I've done so far.First step was to remove the AC unit as these locos didn't have it ,or it was mounted somewhere else.Like the one in the origonal article after I removed to AC I made a cover panel from .005" styrene to save a lot of putty work.



Here is a pic of the cab setting in place but otherwise untouched.I like the big GEs but I think they would look better if GE had adopted this cab for all of the big locos.Except for some mods to the air tanks and the cab,all the modifications are on this (pictured) side of the loco.