I've acquired a number of the excellent Kato E8/8 unit drives to use as power for various ATSF E3/E6 projects, and was fortunate enough to come by a couple of Factory painted units for Santa Fe (later release with improved paint-numberboards, kick plates, builders' plates).
The units are beautiful OOB but don't accurately represent the Santa Fe E8m (rebuilt from the original Amos and Andy and E1s), in that, the Santa Fe units didn't have dynamic brakes. (the trucks used were original E unit trucks and also differ, slightly, from the Kato E8/9 trucks).
At the time, Kato did not make the particular body shell that featured the combination that represents the ATSF units- 'freight pilot', two headlights, no dynamic brakes. (they do now; the latest release for IC now features this configuration). One hopes that Kato will, one day, re-release the ATSF paint scheme on this new body shell.
I would, indeed like to have a couple of these units in my 1957-era fleet (running on some of the local and shorter and connecting routes), so I'm beginning the process that will allow me to have more accurate ATSF versions from pre-painted Kato shells.
As with all of the E/F units (except the FTs) in my 1957 era, Santa Fe modified the pilots for air and trainline hoses, so these were cut out and added, using BLMA parts (where are we going to source these now that Atlas owns BLMA?- glad I acquired many multiples of these sets in addition to the brass Precision Scale versions!) I also added photo-etched windshield wipers and decal windshield shades
To my eye, the biggest modification I could make to mark this as an ATSF unit, was to remove the dynamic brake fan and housing...
so that was the next procedure.
I did want to try to use the fan for some late model F units, so I removed the entire housing rather than 'covering' the area with styrene.
Here, I've drilled holes in the corners, then masked the surrounding area to protect it from inadvertent xacto blade 'slippage'
Then I lightly scored from hole to hole, using multiple light passes to completely remove the panel...
then I cut a piece of Evergreen styrene to fit the square opening; using Tamiya extra thin cement to secure it to the open area. I made sure to glue the piece in such a way to have some protruding above the surrounding roofline (it's much easier to remove this excess than to attempt to fill a depression without damaging the surrounding rivet detail)
there are very small gaps that must be filled before painting to match the surrounding roof, but I first scraped a very sharp Xacto blade across the piece, blending into the roofline...helping to reduce the amount of sanding that will come next. I'll paint some Mr Surfacer into the small gaps, then sand flush after masking the surrounding rivet detail.
You can also see that I removed the molded steps in anticipation of replacing these with GMM etched versions...
Much more to come...
PE cut levers
diaphragms
PE lift rings
two single chime 'Blat' horns to replace the multi-chime horn
and a renumbering to "80"
Thanks for looking,
Bruce
