Up in the guts of a sound equipped GP40

[Ed Kapuscinski]

I grabbed a sound equipped Atlas GP40 on the way home from my parents yesterday with the idea of putting its mechanism under one of my existing GP40-2s.

I was doing the swap today and realized that others might be curious about what's changed between the older models and the new sound equipped ones.

So here we go.

Inside the shell. New on top, old on bottom.
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Mechs.
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And another odd variation, the fuel tanks. The new one has a recess for the speaker.

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[Ed Kapuscinski]

In order to do the retrofit I needed to make a basic modification to the shell.

There are two bumps inside the shell where the hood meets the cab. You need to file those down to get the new cab light insert to fit right. Do that and everything is golden.

[packers#1]

Have you noticed how different the light bits are? The old style comes into the mech to meet the lightbulbs, while the new are thinner and shorter to meet the LEDs

[Ed Kapuscinski]

Yep. Seems to work ok with the swap, but I like the new design.

[packers#1]

Yep. Seems to work ok with the swap, but I like the new design.

I had the back of the shell ride slightly high on the one I had swapped; if it’s plug and play for you though rock on

[DeltaBravo]

Ed, this may be my angle of view, but is the new chassis smaller than the old one?

[Ed Kapuscinski]

Ed, this may be my angle of view, but is the new chassis smaller than the old one?

It's the angle.

[Ed Kapuscinski]

I had the back of the shell ride slightly high on the one I had swapped; if it’s plug and play for you though rock on

Interesting. Yeah, mines been fine. She made her first trip around the layout on PYAL today.

One odd thing: I can't find the horn settings in Decoderpro. Guess I'll wait until the hardware arrives to mount my new Lokprogrammer into the DCC in a Box box.

[nscaler711]

This is why I'm excited to see the release of a Gold Series GP60, I'm assuming they are going to keep the LL GP60 shell intact but change the mechanism for the decoder and speaker.
If these fit the FVM shells that will be even better.
I know I can get a Atlas GP38 shell on the LL Proto GP38 mechanism so hopefully the 60s work out fine.
Thanks Ed.   

[dem34]

Interesting. Yeah, mines been fine. She made her first trip around the layout on PYAL today.

One odd thing: I can't find the horn settings in Decoderpro. Guess I'll wait until the hardware arrives to mount my new Lokprogrammer into the DCC in a Box box.

Atlas with stock Loksound I remember used CV48 and had a selection of common horns that you'd change by setting the CV to a number between 1 and 20. Not sure if that was changed with the newer ones.