SD-24 in it's twilight

[bikingmike]

Hi everyone,

I'm not sure if I should be posting this here or in the finished forum.

This is my Atlas (ex ROCO) SD 24 which I bought via online auction in an undecorated stated. I also had some old Champ Burlington decals that I thought like look alright on it, so I gave it a bash. I haven't made any modifications to the body aside from cutting off the vestigal sun shades in preparation for fitting some better ones later.

Paint is a mix of Tamiya and Gunze-Sangyo acrylics. The white stripes on the hoods were painted on as the decals for them disintegrated.

Weathering was mostly done with the airbrush, with a small amount of pigments added here and there.

Looking at it now, I think it's a bit overdone, but live and learn. I still have to sort out the number boards, as they look a bit naff.

Here it is as delivered:



And then to this...



And then this

[diesel]

I think that came out nice! The weathering makes this look great.

If it runs a bit rough, take a folded paper towel and clean in-between the contact and the inside of the wheels. Also spray a drop into the motor. I did that on 4 of these recently and it very much improved the run. Just make sure the one you use is plastic safe, like CRC.

[jmlaboda]

She's a beautiful beast!!! I have a lot of memories of these units on the Southern Railway and they are considered by me one of those "Golden Oldies." You've done a great job... thanks for sharing your work!!!

Build a business car from the a Pullman Plan 3959 observation car? Click here to learn more.

[Randy Earle]

Looks great! We used to fill the slot in the fuel tank with bondo and file it down to match the rest of the tank.

[danielsokyrail]

That turned out really nice,, great job on the weathering.

[nssd70m]

I think that slot is for using a small screwdriver to remove the body shell from the frame. BTW, nice unit. Earl...

[stewarttrains98]

thats an outstanding weathering job that you did.

[sdl39]

I love it, I'm glad to see what you did with this vintage locomotive. I have a few to re do myself as I always love the way those old Atlas sounded when they ran. I have often felt that I could grind down the tank and put a plastic tank over it. I have a small fleet of the old GP40's too, heck I guess I have pile of old yellow box Atlas units. I remember that me and a friend bought a pile of them in the early 80's from a mail order shop in MR called Hobbies for Men for $9.99 a piece.

[nsc409w]

The weathering is top notch! Excellent job on an old workhorse.

Shane

[spike]

I like this too! My railroad career started on the old Q territory. One of the engineers that I trained with said that the 24s were well liked because they were very powerful at high speed.