Bachmann's Geep

[faraway]

OUTSTANDING Fleet !!!!! Love Geep's anyway, but they sure look impressive. Got to get me a few, and repaint in Grand Truck color's.

A small warning you should know.
1. The shell is made of two pieces only. The cab and all the rest. The hoods and the walkway are one piece. That might be a problem or ask for more masking depending on the paint scheme.
2. If the handrails are glued or not glued to the shell is unpredictable. You may have problems to remove the handrails and not break them. That might be a problem too depending on the paint scheme.
Good luck!

[ChuckC]

Grand Trunk & Western was owned by Canadian National here in the States. So the Colors were the same as CN (Olive Green (sorta))

[faraway]

Grand Trunk & Western was owned by Canadian National here in the States. So the Colors were the same as CN (Olive Green (sorta))

Perfect, just take a silent hour to paint the walkway behind the handrail by small brush with a steady hand.

[Brakie]

It toke some time until the guys in the paint shop completed their work. The 9010 in the first row is still awaiting the bell at the front nose and will also get remote control installed. It will serve as the yard switcher. 9005 and 9002 in the second row run long hood forward (notice horn on long hood) and service counter clockwise track 1 and 2 of the staging yard. 9007 and 9008 in the third row are on duty since some weeks and will run clockwise on tracks 3 and 4 of the staging yard.
All have to come back to the shop in the near future to get MU hoses and some get lights on the cab roof. I have to fiddle with the stacks too. Corman did some unique modifications.

Beautiful!

Gotta love that R.J.Corman scheme.

[ChuckC]

Grand Trunk & Western was owned by Canadian National here in the States. So the Colors were the same as CN (Olive Green (sorta))

Perfect, just take a silent hour to paint the walkway behind the handrail by small brush with a steady hand.

Ah, with a wee bit of Scotch my hand gets very steady Reinhard.

[faraway]

All five engines got MU hoses and ditch light today. 9002 got a simplified remote control. Still waiting for the bell to be mounted high at the short nose.

[faraway]

And finally we got the bell

[Brakie]

I always though the 9002 looks like a oversize bug with antennas.

Nicely done!

[Russ Bellinis]

Looking good, Reinhard. I've only seen R.J. Corman boxcars on the U.P. behind our shop in the City of Industry before I retired. I've never seen any of their engines in service. Just because the horns are on the long hood does not necessarily mean that they operate long hood forward. Santa Fe and now BNSF put the horns on the long hood because the engine crews complained that the horns were way too loud in the cab when mounted on the short hood. It may have even been a safety issue because the horns may have been loud enough to cause hearing damage when mounted near the cab. In fact they mount the horns not only on the long hood, but just about as far back on the long hood as possible!

[faraway]

... Just because the horns are on the long hood does not necessarily mean that they operate long hood forward. ...

Russ, that was not my intended message. I wanted to say that I toke care of that detail of the 9005 and 9010 running long hood forward. Those two engined do run actually long hood forward, have the "F" at the long hood, some photos show the dashboard behind the right side cab window and the horn is on the long hood. I did model both and looked for easy to do details.

[Russ Bellinis]

Ok, I'm not familiar with R.J. Corman locomotives. I've just seen their boxcars out here. I think the Pennsy and the Southern RRs ran long hood forward after most other roads went with chop noses and short hood forward. In fact I think EMD finally told the Southern at some point that they could run long hood forward and have the cabs built accordingly, but that they would no longer build high short hoods for just one railroad.

[Len Turner]

Reinhard,
I'm sure you've seen this so anyone else interested in R J Corman... <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.rjcorman.com/">http://www.rjcorman.com/</a><!-- m -->
I recently saw their derailment crew working in the Tulsa BNSF yard.

[faraway]

... derailment crew working ....

That is where R.J. Corman started his business.

[torikoos]

Hi Reinhard, looking good.

Glad you like your Bachmann Geeps. I have a Bachman GP35 that is technically identical to your geeps. however, I don't like the way the mechanism sounds, it makes a strange 'crackling' sound when running. The build in decoder isn't very good (it's actually based on a very cheap Lenz design) for low speeds, but even so I managed to get some reasonable low speed performance out of it.
I personally don't like the led's provided, TOO orange for my liking. I would prefer blueish leds (a bit like metal halide lamps), but of course a white lamp would be nicest in my opinion.
Currently the drive of this Bachmann unit, has been used to power my son's bachmann spectrum GP 30, an almost straight swap. That way my son can run DCC. I decided that I didn't like the shell of the GP 35 anyway, it is too different from Athearn and Cannon&Co cabs in appearance (some of the cab windows are too large), but your GEEP's look pretty decent for the money.

So all in all, my personal Bachmann experiences so far have not been that succesful, but you seem to have found a great way of expanding your fleet with 'cheap' locomotives, that look pretty good.
Would love to see a bit more of your layout though, can you point me to a thread, as I'm sure you've written about it somewhere here :-)

Koos

[faraway]

Hello Koos,
the Bachmann decoder might be used as a lamp controller only It has been replaced with a MX630 from Zimo, my favorite decoder brand with excellent BMF capabilities. May be they are available in UK ( http://www.zimo.at/web2010/ ).

My layout thread is Freelance 2012. There is also an older one named Freelance 2011. Both in the layout section. You should read them backward as I am doing constantly changes. Or you may access the photos only
2011: http://s966.photobucket.com/albums/ae149...52/FL2011/
2012: http://s966.photobucket.com/albums/ae149...52/FL2012/