Post by mrl651 on Jul 26, 2010 1:57:25 GMT -5
Hello all. As many of you are well aware, and still it's still listed at the top of this page, Mark A. Sullivan, longtime and avid model railroader passed away earlier this year. I had known Mark since 1999 when Jason Roberts, former W&LE employee and since fallen brother (may you both operate trains together in the sky forever) introduced us. I was never a huge Chessie fan, but as we all know, Mark sure was. We kept in regular contact until I moved to Oregon in 2005, when, between a much more demanding work schedule and the time difference, we lost track of each other a bit. We would still talk from time to time, and I at least got to tell him about the Northwest Rail Link, my imaginary Montana Rail Link subsidary operating the old Milwaukee mainline between Marengo, WA and St. Regis, MT and an imaginary line between Bend, OR and Hinkle (Hermiston), OR. The NWRL also operates the former UP lines eastward out of Hooper Jct., WA and maintains trackage rights over the UP between Marengo and Hinkle.
I run on SD9s from time to time at my real job, and they are some of the best engine I've ever run, period. They also ride nice when you get them up to track speed. I quickly learned why the SP called them "Cadillacs." When putting together the roster for my NWRL, I knew that few MRL SD40's or SD45s were going to be availible, largely due to the MRL needing them on their own lines (the NWRL pre-dates the IMRL). With this said, I looked to see what kind of engine were availible in the late 80's and C&O SD18s popped up (among numerous other things). I have always been fascinated by these brutes, with their ALCO RSD5 trucks, paper air filter boxes and just strange-in-general look. Excited, I started doing research and acquiring parts. I was looking forward to telling Mark about my latest undertaking, until I stumbled upon this site. Not quite beliving it was the same Mark Sullivan, I did a quick search and found out it was, making this project even more special. I plan to dedicate the first unit in his honor - I'm dojng at least two.
I decided I was going to use a combination of Atlas SD24 and Proto 2000 SD9 parts for this build. It is not going to be perfect, but will adequately (for me) replicate these motors. There are lots of little imperfections with this theory, but, without completely building ti from scratch, you'll never have a perfect SD18 (now that I've said that, Athearn or Atlas will announce one).
Anyway, with all that aside, here is what we got. I started with a pair of SD24's I got off ebay (I now, consequently, have Southern and "Lackawanna" SD24 shells availible if somebody is interested.) Here, I have disassembled the Lackawanna one completely. I knew some frame modifications were going to need to be done early on, so thats why I took the motor out too. It's a good thing I did, you should see the pile of metal scraps!
I got a number of parts for this project from "sooo-much-stuff" on ebay. He is a great seller, and I have dealt with him numerous times before. However, I think his prices for certain items might me a little higher than buying direct from Atlas, but you can do whatever you see fit.
Here, the RSD5 truck sit in front of the SD24 truck, as a comparison.
You'll note two completely different bolster arrangements. Also, the RSD5 truck is a bit shorter in length than the SD24 truck.
Here, we can see the SD24 truck fits just fine on the frame...
However, the RSD5 truck does not!
Looking down, we can see that the gear tower is the leading culprit. This is the case on both ends, and is solved by removing the metal that is in the way. Unfortunetly, this mean you can no longer use the stock Atlas weight for the front of the engine, but it doesn't weight that much anyway, and you can add some lead into the nose later.
Here is a view from the bottom of the area that I milled out, by hand, with a Dremel, outside (I have an 18mo old I have to consider .
I took the whole works outside and captured this photo...
Back inside, I started working on the trucks. With the new way Atlas does things, the SD24 truck wires are together in a white plug that plugs on the circuit board on top the motor. I wanted to enable the RSD5 trucks to have this, so I disassembled the SD24 trucks and the RSD5 trucks and rebuilt them. I decided I wanted to use the pin method that the SD24 trucks also use, mainly so I wouldn't have to come up with a whole new bolster on the frame. First, I drilled a small pilot hole in the cernterline of the truck where the bulge goes flat, this will later be widened for my pin. Then I removed the weird "cup" looking parts of the RSD5 trucks, and filed the bulge on top the truck flat. In case you're wondering, based on how things are lining up on the model versus the real thing, the truck centers end up being about the same.
Before:
After:
I started looking at my progress so far, and I thought it looked like it was sitting awfully high. The RSD5 truck is in fact a little taller than the SD24 truck. This concerned me greatly, so I ran over to www.rrpicturearchives.net where I knew there was a photo of one of the SD18s coupled to a GP9. This photo, actually: www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=1220053
As we can see, the SD18 does sit quite a bit higher. Here, I compare it to a Proto 2000 GP9:
I am not going to change the height of the unit. It looks pretty good to me!
Stay tuned! Since I am doing two of these units at the same time, it takes me twice as long to complete everything. I started working on the trucks 3 days ago and only finished today. It is very time consuming, and working 10-12 hours on a GP39-2 or SD45-rebuild doesn't leave alot of time for modeling efforts.
I run on SD9s from time to time at my real job, and they are some of the best engine I've ever run, period. They also ride nice when you get them up to track speed. I quickly learned why the SP called them "Cadillacs." When putting together the roster for my NWRL, I knew that few MRL SD40's or SD45s were going to be availible, largely due to the MRL needing them on their own lines (the NWRL pre-dates the IMRL). With this said, I looked to see what kind of engine were availible in the late 80's and C&O SD18s popped up (among numerous other things). I have always been fascinated by these brutes, with their ALCO RSD5 trucks, paper air filter boxes and just strange-in-general look. Excited, I started doing research and acquiring parts. I was looking forward to telling Mark about my latest undertaking, until I stumbled upon this site. Not quite beliving it was the same Mark Sullivan, I did a quick search and found out it was, making this project even more special. I plan to dedicate the first unit in his honor - I'm dojng at least two.
I decided I was going to use a combination of Atlas SD24 and Proto 2000 SD9 parts for this build. It is not going to be perfect, but will adequately (for me) replicate these motors. There are lots of little imperfections with this theory, but, without completely building ti from scratch, you'll never have a perfect SD18 (now that I've said that, Athearn or Atlas will announce one).
Anyway, with all that aside, here is what we got. I started with a pair of SD24's I got off ebay (I now, consequently, have Southern and "Lackawanna" SD24 shells availible if somebody is interested.) Here, I have disassembled the Lackawanna one completely. I knew some frame modifications were going to need to be done early on, so thats why I took the motor out too. It's a good thing I did, you should see the pile of metal scraps!
I got a number of parts for this project from "sooo-much-stuff" on ebay. He is a great seller, and I have dealt with him numerous times before. However, I think his prices for certain items might me a little higher than buying direct from Atlas, but you can do whatever you see fit.
Here, the RSD5 truck sit in front of the SD24 truck, as a comparison.
You'll note two completely different bolster arrangements. Also, the RSD5 truck is a bit shorter in length than the SD24 truck.
Here, we can see the SD24 truck fits just fine on the frame...
However, the RSD5 truck does not!
Looking down, we can see that the gear tower is the leading culprit. This is the case on both ends, and is solved by removing the metal that is in the way. Unfortunetly, this mean you can no longer use the stock Atlas weight for the front of the engine, but it doesn't weight that much anyway, and you can add some lead into the nose later.
Here is a view from the bottom of the area that I milled out, by hand, with a Dremel, outside (I have an 18mo old I have to consider .
I took the whole works outside and captured this photo...
Back inside, I started working on the trucks. With the new way Atlas does things, the SD24 truck wires are together in a white plug that plugs on the circuit board on top the motor. I wanted to enable the RSD5 trucks to have this, so I disassembled the SD24 trucks and the RSD5 trucks and rebuilt them. I decided I wanted to use the pin method that the SD24 trucks also use, mainly so I wouldn't have to come up with a whole new bolster on the frame. First, I drilled a small pilot hole in the cernterline of the truck where the bulge goes flat, this will later be widened for my pin. Then I removed the weird "cup" looking parts of the RSD5 trucks, and filed the bulge on top the truck flat. In case you're wondering, based on how things are lining up on the model versus the real thing, the truck centers end up being about the same.
Before:
After:
I started looking at my progress so far, and I thought it looked like it was sitting awfully high. The RSD5 truck is in fact a little taller than the SD24 truck. This concerned me greatly, so I ran over to www.rrpicturearchives.net where I knew there was a photo of one of the SD18s coupled to a GP9. This photo, actually: www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=1220053
As we can see, the SD18 does sit quite a bit higher. Here, I compare it to a Proto 2000 GP9:
I am not going to change the height of the unit. It looks pretty good to me!
Stay tuned! Since I am doing two of these units at the same time, it takes me twice as long to complete everything. I started working on the trucks 3 days ago and only finished today. It is very time consuming, and working 10-12 hours on a GP39-2 or SD45-rebuild doesn't leave alot of time for modeling efforts.