7mm Richards P48 US Thread

So with being in the US last week not a lot of progress was made.

But I have been learning Fusion 360, which I have to say is a much better 3D modelling program than turbocad is, but utterly useless at 2D.

So the first part designed Fusion is this bolster for an oil tank



It's pretty simple of course and I could have done this in Turbocad very easily.

The coupler boxes were printed a while back, the Kadees are the new 1745 version with the SBE bottom shelf.



I have to say that these tank cars are some the nicest models that Atlas make, I need to get quite a few more.



The trucks are kadee P48 100 ton roller bearing. They are excellent value for money at $42 a pair. The wheel treads come blackened but a quick polish with wire brush in a mini drill soon has them shining like the real thing.



The trucks ride really well, the built in compensation is very effective

richard carr said:

The trucks are kadee P48 100 ton roller bearing. They are excellent value for money at $42 a pair. The wheel treads come blackened but a quick polish with wire brush in a mini drill soon has them shining like the real thing.

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I'd hope Kadee would expand their range of trucks to maybe include some longer wheel base A3 Ride Control versions - probably little chance of Protocraft producing any more trucks, and if they did who knows what price they would charge....as you say, the Kadee offering is very good value for money.

Cheers,

Stephen

Stephen said:

I'd hope Kadee would expand their range of trucks to maybe include some longer wheel base A3 Ride Control versions - probably little chance of Protocraft producing any more trucks, and if they did who knows what price they would charge....as you say, the Kadee offering is very good value for money.

Cheers,

Stephen

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I did speak to them about Caboose trucks, either last year or year before as well.. Didn't say yes, but more importantly didn't say no.. A much smaller market though of course.

JB.

Plenty of test running has been happening over the past couple of weeks, it really does make such a difference having a full circuit of track.
Here's a pair of MP SD40s taking a 25 car train for a spin.





No problems going up the hill any more.


This is going to be the next painting project



It's an overland Southern Pacific MP15AC switcher, they appear to be quite rare, I haven't seen another one anywhere and there's no mention of this on Brass Trains. It dates from 1986, a mere 40 years old. It does have a couple of issues in that the axles are falling out of the trucks, but that will be fixed once I convert it to P48.









The only big error is the fuel tank, it's the wrong size, this is the small one and all the SP locos had the big one, about 10mm longer, fortunately I happen to know a man who has already drawn this in CAD.




The other difficult thing will be to hide all the wiring for the lights, the cab is very open.

richard carr said:

Plenty of test running has been happening over the past couple of weeks, it really does make such a difference having a full circuit of track.

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Doesn't it just?!

I couldn’t resist setting these up on Sunday.



JB.

Nice line up, almost reminds me of all the remaining 26s lined up in two rows at Inverness not long before they were withdrawn

richard carr said:

The other difficult thing will be to hide all the wiring for the lights, the cab is very open.

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The classic SP light package. This is where you may have to use nano-LEDs (which are already wired) by effectively using one in each individual light with its own lens. It takes a lot of patience followed by wiring them up to a small circuit board before connecting them to the decoder - but well worth it. As the wires are very fine they can be easily hidden/disguised.

For the MP15AC model as it stands the SP light packages would require twelve white (headlights (4), mars (4) and classification/marker lights (4)) and two red (warning light) plus another two white LEDs for the number boards. Personally I would check photos and pick a prototype to model which may then require the blanking out of the classification/marker lights and removal of the mars and warning lights thereby reducing the number of LEDs required. Although it may also require the addition of ditch lights and a rotary beacon.

I used nano LEDs in a HO scale DB Br 290 (V90).

Thanks Dave, that's giving me some ideas

Richard

richard carr said:

Plenty of test running has been happening over the past couple of weeks, it really does make such a difference having a full circuit of track.
Here's a pair of MP SD40s taking a 25 car train for a spin.

View attachment 259051

View attachment 259052

No problems going up the hill any more.


This is going to be the next painting project

View attachment 259053

It's an overland Southern Pacific MP15AC switcher, they appear to be quite rare, I haven't seen another one anywhere and there's no mention of this on Brass Trains. It dates from 1986, a mere 40 years old. It does have a couple of issues in that the axles are falling out of the trucks, but that will be fixed once I convert it to P48.

View attachment 259054

View attachment 259055

View attachment 259056

View attachment 259057

The only big error is the fuel tank, it's the wrong size, this is the small one and all the SP locos had the big one, about 10mm longer, fortunately I happen to know a man who has already drawn this in CAD.


View attachment 259058

The other difficult thing will be to hide all the wiring for the lights, the cab is very open.

Click to expand...

Richard,

Have you any updates on your British layout ?

Many Thanks,

Gary

Yorkshire Dave said:

For the MP15AC model as it stands the SP light packages would require twelve white (headlights (4), mars (4) and classification/marker lights (4)) and two red (warning light) plus another two white LEDs for the number boards.

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I do tend to repeat as humour a line I read about the Espee policy, "Why have one headlight when six will do?", but I didn't realise it was that bad!!

Yorkshire Dave said:

The classic SP light package. This is where you may have to use nano-LEDs (which are already wired) by effectively using one in each individual light with its own lens. It takes a lot of patience followed by wiring them up to a small circuit board before connecting them to the decoder - but well worth it. As the wires are very fine they can be easily hidden/disguised.

For the MP15AC model as it stands the SP light packages would require twelve white (headlights (4), mars (4) and classification/marker lights (4)) and two red (warning light) plus another two white LEDs for the number boards. Personally I would check photos and pick a prototype to model which may then require the blanking out of the classification/marker lights and removal of the mars and warning lights thereby reducing the number of LEDs required. Although it may also require the addition of ditch lights and a rotary beacon.

Click to expand...

I think you could easily reduce the number of required lights if you just consider which ones were commonly used on a daily basis. It will also matter what era you want to represent, because obviously it's far simpler to light after the extra lights were removed.

For starters, if you want to represent a period up to about the mid 90's, you could keep the light package intact. But I wouldn't bother lighting the red emergency light. I'm not sure I've ever seen a photo of any SP unit with the red light illuminated. I'm sure their are instances that can be found, but I think it will be very limited. I would also suggest not bothering with the class lights, as I'm not sure I've ever seen an instance of those being lit either. In either case, the photo you do find will be one example out of a thousand images, the point being the usage of either light was an anomaly.

The sort of middle era would be from from roughly 1992 to 1998. During this time, a lot of the units had the extra lights removed and openings blanked over. But in most photos I have seen, most of the locos still don't have ditchlights added. This option would cut lighting down to just the standard twin sealed beam headlight on each end.

The last period would be from the late 90's onward, once ditchlights were added. But any wiring for the ditchlights would be through the frame rather than the cab, so probably easier to manage.

As Dave notes, a beacon would add a light to the cab wiring, as would the smaller flashers if you went later enough to get into remote controlled units (I don't think you're planning on anything that late).

I'm firmly in the blanked out extra lights with ditchlights era. I'll also be adding ground lights and possibly step lights (they don't seem as common on switchers as on road units), so my lighting count will start to creep back up.

Here's a nice webpage with a walk-around of an SP mp15ac. Some really good stuff there.

You mention the discrepancy with the fuel tank as being the one glaring error. Another bugaboo for me personally is the lighting housing over the rear of the cab. The housing should actually be the same as the housing on the front of the loco where it extends from the front of the hood, meaning it should have a peaked roof that protrudes through the rounded cab roof. One of the walk-around photos shows it clearly. It's a fairly subtle detail, often not even discernible from almost any viewing angle. But when seen from above, it's pretty obvious, and of course we are often viewing our models from above. I'd need to have that correct or my eye would start twitching.

I'd probably have a go at narrowing the coupler pockets as well, maybe open up the radiator section on top of the hood and drop some cores and shutters in there, beef up the cab interior details, add underframe air piping and traction motor cabling, that sort of stuff. By the time I was done, it would probably only be like 25% OMI. But then, the later EMD end cab switchers are kind of my thing.

It's now a week since the Chicago March Meet show ended, I'm now back with a few things of mine and a few things for Stephen Mick and JB.
It was a very enjoyable weekend, but the show didn't have many quality pieces for sale this year. There were a few nice overland diesels, but not for me at the price the seller wanted, I'm fairly certain he took them home with him. I was looking for Atlas 25,500 gallon tank cars, I only found 2 for sale, the one at $25 was a real bargain. The same can be said for the 2 BN 50 foot hicube cars at $40 each and some similarly priced coil cars.

My main purchase was this Sunset GP9 in DT&I livery (Detroit Toledo and Ironton) it's heavily weathered and has a QSi decoder in it.



At $600 it wasn't exactly a bargain but there again I might never see another one for sale and it goes nicely with the one I already have.



This one was weathered by Lee Turner, he was at the show and was happy to tell me all about it.
As you can see the weathering is a bit different. Looking at the few photos I can find, this is much realistic of how the locos looked than that on 990 which just seems to have been blasted with a dirty brown paint.

So I wondered if I get rid of the weathering, so a trying a few mild solvents it turned out that Vallejo Air Brush Thinners does remove it without damaging the underlying paint.



So over the next week I plan to remove as much as I can from 990 and then set about doing it again. It's also a different shade of orange to 981 as Lee repainted the whole model with in his view the correct shade of orange. Personally I can live with them both, so I won't be repainting 990.
I also ended buying 980 as the seller had three of these for sale, so that will need doing as well, but three running together should look good and I hoping that if one of them should stall the other 2 will nudge it along and everything will keep moving.

So 990 has now been fully cleaned.




Maybe fully cleaned is a bit of an overstatement but it's looking a lot better now and is ready to be attacked again.

This was it before.



I've also been busy printing lots of coupler boxes and bolsters so that I can get my Lionel gondolas and atlas PS4427 hoppers converted using kadee trucks.

So here are the Lionel gondola bits, the coupler box and the bolster



This is where they need to fit



and how they fit



The couple box can be screwed in place, you can drill a small 0.8mm hole through the rear hole and there's another one under those supports that I haven't removed yet. The you canuse a small 2.3 mm self tapping screw to screw them into the plastic as in the photo below.




When done they look like this





I've used Kadee trucks, so to fix the truck you can use one of the adaptor plugs that they supply, it's the big one, it will need drilling out 2.7mm to take a 2.5mm screw.



You cansee how ut goes through the truck and fits in the hole in the bolster.

I'm back in Chicago this week but before I arrived I spent part of the weekend fitting a Tsunami 2 decoder into an Atlas GP60 (yes another one).
This is a cotton belt one number 9677.

Once the body come off this is what you get in a 2 rail DC model.



The smoke unit just unscrews from under neath, so that came out next. You can then remove the small board on the left in this photo and fit the DCC conversion plugs to attach the decoder.




These are the instructions from Atlas





I then decided that I should actually do the P48 conversion next, but this turned out to be a pain as the screws holding the truck sides in place can only be accessed from above the trucks, so you have to remove the truck from the chassis tot hen remove the motor so you can pull the truck out and unscrew the side frame ! Then you have to put it all back together again.





You can take about 3mm out of each side so it does look at lot narrower once this is done.

Those awful Atlas crew figures are usually the first casualties on my engines!! Not sure what scale they are but it's not 1:48!!
Of course they have to be slim due to the motor & shield filling the cab, but they still look awful. I've only retained one Atlas engineer, in my RS-5, & he's facing the long hood just as a memory aid that 'forwards' on the Alco is the opposite direction to all my EMDs..!!

Jordan or Plymouth Mad said:

..... long hood just as a memory aid that 'forwards' on the Alco is the opposite direction to all my EMDs..!!

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Sort of ish.... N&W, Southern & NS deemed long hood forward on all their engines during the same period, many built with dual control stands to ease sighting. Alco PA's and FA's bucked the trend and were designated forward at the cab end I believe.

Alco was the only builder which designated hood units long hood forward but several railroads designated long hood as forward irrespective of builder.

I'm not sure when NS relaxed the long hood forward mandate, possibly when the safety cabs became more prevalent/numerous.

mickoo said:

Sort of ish.... N&W, Southern & NS deemed long hood forward on all their engines during the same period,

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Yeah, I did say "all my EMDs", none of which have anything to do with those Railroads.