Southern GP30 High Hood Build Progress Pics

[Herc Driver]

Mark - Yep...several southeastern railroads used the high hood variant. But, I don't know the reason why Southern chose to buy the high hood version. Southern Railway frequently ran their high hoods "backwards" or "long hood forward" to help protect the crews (from sources I read). (But these GP30's look best running cab forward, in my opinion.) Yet, having sat and rode in the cab, there's very little area visible ahead of the engine sitting in the engineer's seat when you're running cab-forward, so I really wonder how much the crews liked running "long hood forward".

It's a strange engine to get used to...most either love it or hate it. But it's the first engine my boys and I ever rode on, so for us, we really like the looks of it. We rode on engine 2601 at the North Carolina Transportation Museum...and that engine was just about clean enough to eat off of. The paint really shined and the crew and staff were great.

[Tom]

It seems to my uneducated (always loved the Southern but don't know much about it) eye, it appears to *me* that the gold stripes are a little thinner than prototype, so I would add another line of them, and that would take care of the gap in the cab stripe, thus killing two birds with one stone.

Just an idea.

My girlfriend is wondering though why as a WP/UP modeler why I am on the lookout for an Athearn RTR HO SD40-2 in Southern paint (which are not exactly easy to find btw). I told her I just REALLY like them. And yeah, I'll run it. I can't recall an SRR SD40-2 ever running on the WP with WP or UP power, but i don't care. I just REALLY like them.

[Herc Driver]

I've thought that very same thing...that the one stripe doesn't quite look thick enough. But it really wasn't that wide...and per the EMD sheet, I guess Microscale got it as close as they could. Still...adding one more stripe over the top of the first one, maybe adding 1/2 the total width, might solve some visual problems that one stripe gives. Of course, just putting on that one stripe was tough enough...I'm not sure my hands are that steady to put another one over the top of the first a uniform width like that. (Next time...I'm painting that blankety blankety stripe on.)

LOL! (Ask someone who was supposed to stick to Southern why he has so many other RR's like UP, SF, ATSF, BNSF, NS, Amtrak, and a whole host of others....)

I could kick myself for not buying the LifeLike GP30 high hood in Southern colors when it came out. I can't run anything HO...but it would have made a great desk display piece...and like an idiot, I didn't buy one. (Oh...and it could have served as a model for my attempts at building the same engine.)