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Post by CP_8530 on Jan 12, 2013 23:14:15 GMT -5
I always see people doing up CN SW1200RS units (and GP9RM's), but hardly see any love for Canadian Pacific or CP Rail ones. So, I figured I might as well share my CP SW1200RS build. I actually have two, one started before the TLT SW1200RS announcement and had progressed quite a bit, and the other just happened to come about because of a good deal on a NIB unit, which shall be the one focused on. A large number of changes are needed to Canadianize a stock SW9/SW1200 into a mighty SW1200RS. The trucks need to be changed to Flexicoils, full numberboard/headlight assemblies are needed, extended-range fuel tank, taller exhaust stacks or spark arrestors, different steps, different handrails, among other things. This one is going to be a Canadian Pacific unit, so a few of those features (present on CN units) won't be added. As with all good projects, you need a "core" or "donor" unit. Our victim: a NIB Proto 2000 SW9 in PRR green. I can hear the PRR fans gasping as they read this.
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Post by iomalley on Jan 12, 2013 23:23:11 GMT -5
TLT announcement? You're probably safe to take a decade to build yours before it comes out...
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Post by CP_8530 on Jan 13, 2013 0:18:33 GMT -5
TLT announcement? You're probably safe to take a decade to build yours before it comes out... True Line Trains makes some good products, but they're quite sloppy with the finer points. Don't get me started on all the numbering errors they made over the years: a CP C424 numbered "4325", a CP FA1 with a B-unit number, the wrong numbers on the CN bulkhead flats (HSC vs MIL car numbers). A CP RDC2 in a later scheme it never wore because it was wrecked early on. And especially on one of the GO MP40's, 637, which should have the newer logo but they ended up doing it with the older one*. *Which I warned them about right when they announced the numbers for the project as they were doing units from the second order that weren't even BUILT yet, assuming there would be no changes because they were working with MPI on them. Then BAM, Ontario comes out with the new Trillium logo and slaps it all on the second order being built and delivered. Then TLT said they were going to do both logo versions, but oops, looks like that didn't happen! Sigh, such an avoidable mistake.Anywho, after removing all the details from the shell and the usual 99% isopropyl alcohol bath, old PRR 8521 has become a relatively clean slate (except the frame: it's next). And as a bonus, the chassis has been stripped. No, it wasn't parked in a bad part of town and found 3 days later on cinderblocks. ;D . The trucks, removed, will need to be heavily rebuilt to accommodate Athearn Flexicoil sideframes.
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efram
Chairman
Posts: 206
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Post by efram on Jan 13, 2013 11:29:30 GMT -5
Can't wait to see how you convert the sideframes to Flex-i-coils >
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Post by CP_8530 on Jan 13, 2013 14:59:49 GMT -5
Thanks guys. The Flexicoils are a bit of a chore, I've done a few so far including that BC Hydro unit in another thread. Prototype: I wanted a Toronto/Ontario assigned unit, and narrowed it down based on a list of '70's roster assignments and online photos. My other SW-RS on the workbench is an action red one, so I wanted some variety and therefore looked for one in maroon/grey that lasted into the 70's. Due to some issues with the switchers having slightly narrower (horizontally) script lettering than my Microscale set had, I elected to do a unit with block lettering. It basically came down to 8112, 8145 and 8151. Since I'm still at an impasse with the handrails on my action red unit (CP used rather unique stanchions to retrofit the side handrails) preference was given to one not yet retrofitted with the full side handrails, and 8151 was eventually chosen. No watchman's heater too (which would be an extra skinny stack near the bell, present on some units). www.mountainrailway.com/Roster%20Archive/CP%208100/CP%208151.htmIncidentally, 8151 lives on, rebuilt in the 80's as CP 1244, and recently resold to the Ontario Southland: www.railpictures.ca/?attachment_id=7405
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Post by upguy1981 on Jan 13, 2013 16:18:48 GMT -5
Sounds like a fun project can't wait to see it come along
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Post by CP_8530 on Jan 13, 2013 21:58:27 GMT -5
Let's start with something relatively easy: the exhaust stacks. As-delivered, the CP units had little half-round sheet metal covers over the stacks. That didn't last too long however (and I'm not entirely sure the later half of the fleet had those): With - www.images.technomuses.ca/searchpf.php?id=9065&lang=enWithout - www.images.technomuses.ca/searchpf.php?id=7413&lang=enBut the stacks on them now, as it is, appear taller than the P2K ones on the model. They'll need to be extended up. I was thinking of a way to do this with styrene rod and get the right taper as well as have a good fit (so the things won't break off easily), when it occurred that reshaping the spark arrestors would be an easy way. Stock P2K spark arrestors, and how they look/fit in the P2K exhaust stacks. Drill hole a little larger for the top: File down the sides against a file, easiest to do with the arrestor in a pin vice. Stop every so often to make sure profile is right (must be on an angle, and match the original stacks). You'll note a completed one on the upper right: Glue new exhaust extensions in, patch with body putty, and file/sand down to match rest of stack (still to do). I might have filed a bit off much off on the tip of the left one, but good 'nuff:
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Post by CP_8530 on Jan 15, 2013 23:50:49 GMT -5
Carbody mod time. A few basic changes to the cab & hood carbody are needed. An access door needs to be added under the engineer's side of the cab, as per all CP SW1200RS units (larger than the stock one). I cut out a hole in the side and replaced it with a door made from styrene, and latches and hinges from a scrapped shell. Since the cab clips on to the body here, you'll want to make sure it's glued on well and everything is square. The old horn mount hole was patched and a new hole drilled through the middle of the edge of the roof. Small angled pieces of styrene were added underneath as per prototype. Also, cab vents were installed. The earliest CP SW1200RS units didn't have them, but it seems the rest of them did and most of the earlier ones were retrofitted later. I used some spare louvres cut from a GP7 long hood. Patch the roof hole where the old round roof vent was. A good solid block of units in the middle of the fleet had a square box step at the front (one was made out of styrene and installed), but early and a few late units had the traditional EMD flat step. Refer to photos for this. On the battery boxes, I patched the side handrail and step holes (below the rear handrail holes) and shaved off a louvre vent on the bottom of each of the sides. The future drop step assembly at the rear will double as a rear step. The long hood had the 2nd set of side lift rings removed, patched and filed smooth. Since this unit will be retaining the hood-mounted handrails, those are not to be patched. The gaps in the new exhaust stack extensions were filled with putty and sanded as well. Patch the stock handrail holes on the frame, and add extensions to the pilot sides as these areas should be as wide as the frame, probably due to CP's unique steps. Oh, cut out the steps at all four corners first, as they are to be replaced with typical Canadian vertical steps.
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GTDan
Trainmaster
Modeling the GTW circa 1976ish in Orange Texas
Posts: 102
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Post by GTDan on Jan 16, 2013 7:07:25 GMT -5
Looking good so far! Keep up the good work!
GT Dan
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Post by jakeloyst on Jan 17, 2013 18:42:10 GMT -5
Great job so far, eager to see how it turns out
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Post by CP_8530 on Jan 18, 2013 2:18:44 GMT -5
And now, the tricky part: rebuilding the trucks to accept Athearn Flexicoil sideframes (part ATH 39020, for the SW1500). Since the wheelbases seem to match up, there's no worry of wheelbase spacing issues between the stock P2K AAR trucks and Flexicoil sideframes. I've done a few conversions so far, so have largely worked the bugs out of it, but it does still take quite a bit of work. Some things were taken from m636(?)'s previous Flexicoil-P2K mods, some were adapted from the popular "Bannadaptation" of Athearn Blomberg sideframes onto Atlas trucks, and some things I came up with myself: As always, almost everything on the chassis needs to be taken apart: First, we'll start with the pickup strip modifications, as these are easiest. They will be moved to the inside of the truck to allow closer clearances between the wheels and sideframes, for a nicer looking setup (and less mods than cutting channels into the sideframes for pickup strips, or filing the insides totally flat). First, the black tabs holding the wires on the pickup strips were removed along with the wires (to be soldered on later), and the top tabs bent off as best as possible: Then, each of the "spiked" ends were filed down flat with a file. These will go on the inside, with the stock smooth ends facing the inside of the wheels, as you can see here. Make sure the pickup strips are quite straight, as if they're slightly bent they may rub against the backs of the wheels, creating noise. In order for the pickup strips to be moved to the inside, the axle gears need to have a bit of material at their ends removed for clearance. I eyeballed it for the most part, removing a few cm's of material from either end with a sharp hobby knife, being careful to get a straight cut down. I may have removed a bit more than necessary in the photos, but no harm done. Note, none of the axle gears I've done on my so-far-4 conversions were split by doing this: General assembly of sideframes, with the modified pickup strips and cut-down axle gears. There should be enough clearance between the axle gear and back of wheelset for the pickup strips to fit and rotate easily on the axles. Removing axle-wheel assemblies from trucks will become a bit more tricky, as one will have to remove one wheel from each axle gear on either side to get the entire assembly apart and off the pegs the redesigned truck gearbox will have: Last step is to solder the wires to the new "inside" (filed side) of the pickup strips. One can do this step at the end as well, after all the sideframe and gearbox test-fitting. Next, truck gearbox modifications.
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Post by CP_8530 on Jan 18, 2013 3:12:56 GMT -5
The thing here was the old sideframes had sort of a self-equalizing nature, with the pointed ends of the contact strips fitting into the sideframes and everything fitting nice and snug, and the axle gears riding slightly above the gearbox holes they fit into. However, since our whole setup involved a lot of custom cutting and hacking there's room for error. The first conversion I did I tried to keep that, and I found the trucks were slightly wobbly on the new pegs since the pickup strips no longer rely on the sideframes to sit straight. And even if they did, because we're attaching the end clips from the old sideframes onto the new Athearn sideframes with glue one at a time, there might be a lot of reworking and regluing needed to get everything perfectly square and fully equalized as before. So what I elected to do is have the axle gears sit right in the gearbox holes they go in, and use the entire truck gearbox to keep all the wheelsets equalized. Friction from rubbing was a concern, but since the contact areas are so small and everything is made up of slippery plastic, I haven't noticed any problems related to this (and I've put quite a bit of runtime on the few I've converted). The new pegs keep everything aligned to keep wheelsets from slipping sideways, the gearboxes keep all the axles and wheels square, and the fit of the modified sideframes will keep the pickup strips from wandering back and forth as they may slightly when this part is completed without them. Everything will be a nice tight fit in the end. --- First, disassemble the gearboxes and remove all the gears. Then, cut off part of the side extensions on the gearbox where the peg from the old sideframes went into. How much your remove is based on how tight the general wheel-contact strip assembly fits (4th photo in previous post, and remember to NMRA gauge the wheelset assemblies before doing this) but I found it was about 3-4cm. Unfortunately I don't have a good photo of this part, but the pieces to cut I'm talking about are highlighted in red (remember, not the entire ones sticking out, just 3-4cm off the ends): (Also refer to 4th photo on this post for a slightly better idea). Next, cut off the large pegs from the Athearn sideframes: those will be used to plug the holes. A few pieces of larger wire or rod nearly the same diameter of the hole in the contact strip will do for new pegs. Incidentally, there was a paperclip nearly the right size in my drawer, so... Drill a hole off-centre near the top of the Athearn peg for the new metal rod, making sure it's nice and straight, and insert metal rod in hole. Test fit in the sideframe holes. In the photos it's shown as not fitting all the way in: some filing on the peg was needed for a snug fit. The Athearn peg should be sitting all the way up in the hole. The metal peg will stick out, go through the pickup strip hole, and into another hole in the back of the (future) sideframes. Glue-wise, since the gearboxes are slightly slippery, I scored hatched patterns on the insides of the gearbox holes with an x-Acto knife in order for the glue to have a much stronger grab. The Athearn peg was glued in with medium-viscosity CA glue, followed by a careful application of the really thin runny CA to get it in all the joints. One could make the metal peg removable for ease of removing wheelsets/pickup strips, but having it slip or get pushed into the gearbox isn't usually a good thing. Now you can slip the pickup strips and wheelsets onto the pegs. This part is a bit awkward because of the redesign with the pickup strips on the inside. I usually leave the opposite wheels off and then slip the pickup strips on, and then insert the wheels and NRMA gauge the assemblies (as on the truck on the right). Next, the sideframe mods (!). A bit of filing and fitting is needed.
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Post by iomalley on Jan 18, 2013 9:42:21 GMT -5
I did this once with the factory painted proto CN green-gold SW and can feel your pain brother!
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Post by jakeloyst on Jan 19, 2013 19:42:22 GMT -5
Build looks great! Looking forward to what you are doing for the steps, detail parts, or build your own?
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Post by CP_8530 on Jan 20, 2013 0:45:23 GMT -5
Build looks great! Looking forward to what you are doing for the steps, detail parts, or build your own? Thanks, let's see, I already built some steps from styrene and fitted them to the frame, they're ok so I'll probably leave them. The handrails will all be custom-bent from steel wire and use some leftover stanchions from a Kaslo GP9RM kit. I already modified a fuel tank with the extended sides and wire-bent-for-piping from another unit, which I'm going to borrow for this project. And the numberboards...well, I'm not entirely happy with the appearance of most numberboard parts I've seen, so will probably scratchbuild my own. Sideframe modification time:** One minor step I forgot from before: you may want to file a little bit off the square pegs at the ends of the truck gearboxes (that the sideframe clips clip on to). I find it's easier for fitting and removing, and there's still enough of the pegs to hold the sideframes on as long as the end clips are tight. ** First we want to amputate the end clips, including the brake shoes as shown. The more surface area to glue to the better. Set aside. Now that the pegs are removed from the Athearn sideframes, I scored the inside area as well as the outer brake shoes with a cross-hatched pattered for better glue adhesion. IMPORTANT: The P2K wheelsets have axle ends that stick out for the outside pickup strips that we moved inside. At this point, I drilled holes into the backs of the sideframe bearings to take the longer axle ends of the P2K wheels, but one can just cut or grind the axle ends off instead. Next, glue a .020" piece of sheet styrene in place as a spacer. Then I cut some T-sections from 0.40" styrene to fit in the middle. The upper T-part was originally envisioned to glue a styrene brace to in the event the pickup strip was unlevel and rocking, but that wasn't needed (still left in place, just in case). All the styrene pieces were cross-hatch scored and glued in with CA. A centre hole was drilled for the peg from the gearbox to fit into, it doesn't have to be a precise fit so I made the hole larger for ease of fitting it over. It was drilled in the middle just a bit lower than the centre of that rear rib at the back of the sideframe, as shown: Time to apply the amputated end clips. This was done by holding the sideframes to the assembled truck gearboxes with the wheel assemblies in place, fitting and checking that the end clips fit well onto the ends (making sure that the sideframes sat even, that there were no gaps between the sideframes and clips, and that everything fit together firm but not too tight). I had to file down the end clips along the brake shoes to ensure proper fitting. If one shaves off too much, they can always use styrene shims. Unfortunately I don't have shots of this fitting process as it requires two hands to do. Each clip was then cross-hatch scored and fitted & glued to the sideframe ends with CA. After seeing any gaps were patched with styrene and everything fit and rolled well, a final application of thin CA was applied to super-weld the end clips to the sideframes. Set aside to dry, any styrene bits were patched with glue, and later touched up with black paint. To ensure a reliable fit every time, and since small differences can arise due to custom fitting each sideframe, the backs were marked with where each of the sideframes was meant to fit (FR for Front Right, RL for Rear Left, etc). and the trucks were marked with "front" or "rear" to follow this. Note, one would need to remove the inner sand hoses and brake shoe slack adjustment pin things from the sideframes, as they may rub against the fuel tank and cause tracking issues. Now would be a good time to do any brake cylinder installation work and piping. Next step, final truck assembly.
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Post by jakeloyst on Jan 20, 2013 21:58:08 GMT -5
Do you mean the front numberbaord/headlight assembly? There are 3 that I have seen, Miniatures by Eric, Custom finishing models, and the original one by Juneco. If you find one better than the one by MBE, let me know, I havent had any luck making a satisfactory one better. Do you have dimensions on the ladder type steps used on these units? I made a CN version int he green, and found that the parts from Cannon for their hood unit sub bases, has an access door, that has the 3 hinges on it, and almost the same width as the sw's cab. Havent got one completed yet to see how it really looks once painted up .
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Post by CP_8530 on Jan 22, 2013 13:47:43 GMT -5
Do you mean the front numberbaord/headlight assembly? There are 3 that I have seen, Miniatures by Eric, Custom finishing models, and the original one by Juneco. If you find one better than the one by MBE, let me know, I havent had any luck making a satisfactory one better. Do you have dimensions on the ladder type steps used on these units? I made a CN version int he green, and found that the parts from Cannon for their hood unit sub bases, has an access door, that has the 3 hinges on it, and almost the same width as the sw's cab. Havent got one completed yet to see how it really looks once painted up . Rather than modifiying a stock one, I scratchbuilt my last numberboard assembly from styrene bits and I-beams, so am taking that route for this one. The steps I'm building from styrene, eyeballing from photos since they're pretty much straight up-down. Final truck assembly:Sideframes ready for installing: Clipping them on with the wheel assemblies in place: Below view showing completed assembly: Finally, one needs to trim the tabs on the gearbox: Ready for installation (still need to trim and paint some of the styrene bits black):
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Post by CP_8530 on Jan 26, 2013 3:13:17 GMT -5
very nice looking trucks there Mr D can't wait to see this one done. might just have to have you build a couple for my Indian Rock Ltd. again nice work After this one, and the last three Flexicoil conversions, I think I'm going to have a bit of a SW-break-RS! There's a new streamlined EMD sitting on my workbench for the next Canadian project, with very little to no truck work needed . Anywho, numberboard housings fabricated from styrene sheet and I beams (numberboard holes cut into them, mounted in a v-shape, and the edges on one side cut off). A piece of flat styrene was rolled to the correct profile, trimmed, glued on, and trimmed more. Bits of styrene and putty filled any holes. A Details West Pyle headlight was added, a few styrene bits for side flag holders, class lights amputated from a GP18 nose (parts left in the parts box from the CP GP7u 1684 project). A bit of patching was done, along with replacing the hood grabs with metal ones. And some of the painting has also begun:
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Post by jakeloyst on Jan 26, 2013 20:58:11 GMT -5
I've always used the MBE numberboards, but I have to admit, yours look awesome! great work !
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Post by CP_8530 on Jan 26, 2013 23:50:28 GMT -5
I've always used the MBE numberboards, but I have to admit, yours look awesome! great work ! Thanks! Having a look at the MbyE numberboards on a friend's CN SW1200RS-in-progress, they look pretty good. I guess I may have been thinking of the older Juneco ones.
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