Another CSX Road Slug

[lindsaya99]

This is the beginning of my road slug rebuilt from a GP-35. I'm building this one mostly from parts from my junk box. The deck is from a Rail Power Products GP-35 shell. I cut it down to the frame long ago planning to rebuild the hood with Cannon parts. The cab, short hood, sub base, and clean air room are from Kato shell. I bought a few of them second-hand a while back and one was missing the deck. It also had a lot of glue smeared around the grab iron holes so it became a donor for this project. I'm going to build the rest of the long hood from styrene with a couple of Cannon doors. The long hood end and roof will also be Cannon. It is just easier than sanding off all the detail from the original Kato hood. The dynamic hatch has already been cleaned up. I plan to add etched steps and treadplate. The whole thing will sit on an Athearn RTR frame and trucks. I'm thinking it will be a dummy. I'll post more pics when I make some more progress on the long hood.
Charlie

[deez]

Thats not bad at all so far Charlie! You know you can shorten an Atlas SDP35 long hood down too, for a nice GP35 hood. Looks like you have a phase 1a sub base also. I like those. Another good detail fix is the angled step wall behind the engineers side of the cab. Most GP35's, especially the early ones, do not have that rectangle notch at the bottom of the wall. It's a totally flat piece. Check your prototype photos for sure though.

[lindsaya99]

Thanks Deez,
I would have completely missed that. I checked a few prototype photos and I will need to fill that slot. Here is a good shot I found of these things when they were first rebuilt.
Charlie

www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=1825554

[deez]

Wow those suckers have no hood doors. I didn't know that about those slugs. That's an early GP35 too. Notice that it has no rounded bump under the headlights between the number boards. The battery box doors have no louvers in them on the slug now either.

[drolsen]

Charlie - Just wondering how this project is coming. I managed to get a couple Kato GP35 shells when they were on sale a couple years ago and plan to turn at least one into a slug like yours. I have an extra P2K GP30 chassis that I'm going to use to power it, but I plan to put Atlas trucks under it to attempt to match the performance of the Atlas GP40-2 mother that it will be paired with. This slug set, plus a couple GP30 slugs, will power the locals on my future Old Main Line layout, so I want them to be as smooth as possible for the switching operations they will perform.

Thanks for sharing your project!

Dave

[carlmarsico]

I've always been a fan of CSX road slugs, mostly due to the variety:

Here's one rebuilt from a Phase IIb GP35, however it ended up with the earlier inertial air filter screens, and also appears to have the flat dust bin to give this one that much more of an identity crisis:



Former SCL GP40 (vs. usual ex-Chessie GP30 or GP35):



Looking at the other side, we have another identity crisis now that the brake ratchet that was omitted from per SCL and L&N specs at the time this unit was built is now present:

www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=135665

I'm sure there are plenty more...

CJM

[drolsen]

Sept 25, 2011 23:29:33 GMT -5 carlmarsico said:

Former SCL GP40 (vs. usual ex-Chessie GP30 or GP35):

Thanks a lot for posting that - I guess I hadn't realized that any GP40s were converted to slugs that long ago. I had always thought those didn't come around until the end of the '90s or later. That would definitely make for an interesting variation from the normal slugs.

I think I'll only need two ex-GP30 slug sets and one ex-GP35 set (that's probably all I'll have the energy to build), but the GP40 would definitely be neat to do too.

Dave