Rehabing an Older Coach

[jwb]

I was going through and scanning some old photos and found some that a friend took of a Santa Fe Con Cor coach I'd been working on in the late 1970s:

   

   

   

Although it was something I'd "aspired" to operate, at the time, and for some years afterward, I didn't have a place to run it. So it stayed in a box. When I looked at the photos, I saw I'd done a fair amount of work on it, and it had possibilities. The work included frosting the rest room windows, adding wire grabs to the sides and ends, replacing the trucks, body mounting Kadees and sanding the ends flat. A start, but not operable.

I located it and pulled it out. One thing I saw was that although I'd sanded the ends flat to get rid of hokey "details", I hadn't attached diaphragms. IHC subsequently brought out plastic ones to match its more recent imports, and I had a few spares, so I decided to add those. It also needed some cleaning and paint touch up, extra weight, and replacement of the car number, which appears to have fallen off one side. (I hadn't gotten into the habit of sealing decals.)

Here's the current status:

   

   

[Catt]

Rehabbing a older project always gives me a sense of satisfaction. Does not matter if it is one of my own or someone elses mess that I bought at a trainshow. I've had a few that I've redone several times because I look at them and see all the mistakes I made.