Genesis GP38-2 shell on Trainman drive

[faraway]

I have never been happy with the various noises produced by the Genesis drives. Some are better some are worse but they never reach Atlas's level of silence.

My solution is to put the wonderful GP38-2 Genesis shell on a Atlas Trainman drive. The same applies to the Genesis GP40-2 shell.

The solution is quite simple. You must mill the chassis complete flat. That is a lot of hand milling and a lot of dirt. It is better if you have a garage or workshop to do so! The Atlas weights do not fit into the shell. They are to wide. You may omit them as I do (my short trains need little pulling power only) or do another milling session with even more dirt.

IMG_5024 by faraway52, on Flickr
IMG_5023 by faraway52, on Flickr

The shell need minor modifications only. The rear truck support can not be milled off (of course) but the shell must be modified to slip over the truck support. Furthermore must the bottom of the shell with all it's detail leveled too. No bottom details. You need as flat bottom shell to fit on the flat drive. The bell is the only detail to survive. The cab interior is reduced to the rear wall only.

Kadee coupler boxes and a strips of styrene are used to mount the shell.
IMG_5026 by faraway52, on Flickr

The Genesis tank opening needs to be extended to fix under the Trainman chassis. It is a very tight fit and I glued the tank with small drops of CA to the bottom of the chassis. A double sided sticky tape is to think and the tank would be to low.
The air tanks are glued on top of the tank at both sides. That is easier to glue (styrene to styrene) and the fuel and air tank assembly is not interfering when the shell must be removed.

Inside is plenty of room for a Tsunami drop in sound decoder. Four tiny sugar cubes on a styrene strip lay freely on the rear truck. The bulbs are replaced with LEDs.

I am happy. This beautiful Genesis shell moves virtually in silence over the tracks!

IMG_5027 by faraway52, on Flickr
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I had a plan to save the intensive drive milling and modify the shell only. That does NOT work. Do not try to fit the shell over the drive. I had to give up at this stage of shell modification and useed a a lot of glue to stabilize the shell after so much support had been removed and the shell was still far away from fitting. The left side of the chassis is far to high to fit under any circumstanced.

** Warning ** DO NOT fit the shell to the drive but fit the drive to the shell **

IMG_5025 by faraway52, on Flickr

[Schraddel]

Reinhard,

a good piece of workmanship you have done here, extensive and difficult.
But have you ever thought to replace the sometimes squeaky Roco motors with Mashima or Kato ones?
Mashima Type 1830 oder 1833:
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The challenge will be the demounting and remounting of the flywheels.


Cheers Lutz

[faraway]

Lutz, I have thought about that option but dropped it. It is not the motor alone. The entire drive mechanics from motor to wheel emit various different noises.

[faraway]

I modified two more Atlas trainman frames to be used with Genesis GP38-2 and GP40-2 shells.

The process is very straight forward
1. make the frames flat except the to truck supports, shorten them and make the ends by about 1mm (1/20").
2. make the bottom of the shell flat (except the bell) and widen the frame for the rear truck support

IMG_5046 by faraway52, on Flickr
IMG_5047 by faraway52, on Flickr
IMG_5048 by faraway52, on Flickr
IMG_5049 by faraway52, on Flickr
IMG_5051 by faraway52, on Flickr

The final results are the CR GP40-2 shell and Enonami decoder transferred to one Atlas drive and the second drive fitted with a Tsunami sound decoder (GE version mounted upside down to fit Atlas drive) awaiting it's GP38-2 Genesis shell.

IMG_5052 by faraway52, on Flickr

The shell fits with the cab interior on the modified drive. My other remark was not correct. That makes it even easier.

[faraway]

This CSX GP38-2 os one of my favorites but it had less than 30 minutes run time due to the nasty noise of the drive. The fine shell got transplanted to the second drive prepared yesterday within 15 minutes. That is exactly what I wanted to achieve with the drive update that gives me the freedom to run any of the fine Genesis shells on the silent Atlas drives
I intend to prepare more drives to reduce the frequency of shell swaps.

IMG_5053 by faraway52, on Flickr

[jcj380]

I agree about the Athearn drives even though I "grew up" on them. Wonder how a conversion using the new NWSL power trucks would go.

[postman]

Great work!. Did the same project but used a Proto 2000 GP38-2 shell.