Raining a good bit this weekend and I'm back from a trip to Texas to see the son and his family... Got up at 2:30 AM to catch a flight back... took a nap and a walk with the dog and went down to my room in the basement to start thinking about the gorge again. Spring has sprung fully, but when it rains, I'm inside.
More delays on the Acme. My inkjet printer took a dump. Won't power up anymore, but I think I can use the wife's upstairs which is a pain. I'm also about out of good Insta-Cure+ gap filling CA, so I ordered some more off evil bay. I don't plan to work on that project until I get the new glue.
Ran some trains and started looking at my own personal "deadline" - a couple of locomotives with issues. 6751 is my ex-PC C628 that I've had for a good while. Stewart model. It's got a heat issue that melted the shell, and (probably not coincidentally, a DCC issue). The melting started at least a year ago, but wasn't too bad and I was considering spackling and sanding the first depression in the sidewall, but the recent new warping of the top of the shell is just not operable.
Time to decide what to do with this beast, and the options are fairly large. When running, it's a champ, so I'm going to keep the chassis. This was one of my first weathering projects and I am very fond of this shell and the weathering job that appropriately captures the look of the early years of Conrail, but like I said, it's literally TOAST. Cab's still good (aside from a missing set of horns and a mounting frame) and I'm missing some front handrails. The chassis would fit any of the Stewart/Bowser 3-axle Century models (C628, C630 and C636), so I went on the Bowser website and started looking for replacement shells, all of which can be had for $15 each. However, there are two versions of the C636 shell that they are currently having a fire sale on ($7 and $2)! The $2 version is (I believe) the version without dynamic brakes, but the PC never bought those, so if I want a C636, I think I'll have to pass on the $2 part. The C636 also rode on hi-ad trucks, so I'd need to buy those - a full set of gear towers with the hi-ad trucks would run me $50, so no C626 for me! I did have a PC C630 once, and I liked the look of it, but ended up selling it because I had a Reading version and this C628.
If I want to model CR assets (628 and 630's), I'd have my choice of LVRR, PC and RR color schemes, and I could do either the Cornell red or Snowbird LV schemes and paintouts or the black dip PC version in the 628. The 630 would either be a non-Bee Line RR (almost all of the bee line units rode on hi-ad trucks) or the black dip PC unit. The Snowbird scheme has always been one that I've wanted to try (inspired by Charlie's White Elephants), and if I wanted to model either of the LV versions, that would mean buying decals and probably some paint. I already have a brutally weathered green and yellow Reading C630, so I feel like if I do model another C630, I think I'd be inclined to go with a PC version, maybe still in Penn Central logos.
Before pulling the trigger on this project, I'm just going to have to look at a bunch of pictures for inspiration. The other options also include foreign power, although I don't know if Conrail would have intentionally leased another big Alco (probably not). I can also lie in wait and hope that a finished shell or a defunct unit pops up on ebay for a good price. In the meantime, I can get to work figuring out the DCC decoder issue and see what caused all of the heat at the top of the shell.
