flightops
Active Member
The SDP40 I picked up off ebay for 25 bucks showed up today. Well, 25 bucks to purchase, more like 65 bucks once shipping was added. Still, it was worth taking the risk to me based on the pictures.
Not an expert on this stuff by any means, but I believe this is whats known as “blue box”:
This is obviously someone’s collection of bits (likely an estate sale box lot thing) as the end of the box is hand written in marker “gp 40 Dummy”:
If I use some magnification, it looks like the first stamped letters crossed out are “F7A”. The rest are mostly illegible.
Inside is three sheets:
They had listed it as the “trainamaster”. But at least it had an SD40-2 sheet in it:
And the diesel itself:
All there, all intact. Looks like someone painted it and used waterslide decals as the white lettering is crumbling and turns to dust if even grazed.. Paint looks well done at least. I sides of the shell is all black plastic. Or at least it looks like black plastic, it might be sprayed black..
I pop the shell off for a look:
Little corrosion here and there but it looks complete. I’ll (obviously) give it a full teardown, cleaning and re-lubricating.
As a quick test, I drop it on a section of track and try it. Starts right up. Quiet and smooth. Crawls super slow with just the lightest touch of power. Even the little light bulb still works.
And it’s HEAVY! At least it’s a lot heavier than anything else I been running (admittedly, not much prev experience with “hobby grade” stuff).
The “flywheel effect” when trying to stop is new to me. Run the front trucks off the rail end the first time as I’m used to the pancake diesels stopping on the spot when power is low/off. I adapt to it easily after that first stop and no further issues.
I’m probably going to repaint it in CN livery. From what I can gather, CN only ever had two SDP40’s. They ran lots of SD40-2’s, but next to no SDP’s. Thats ok by me though, this is just more of a fun thing than a historically correct exercise.
Its going to be a good runner when I’m finished I think. I think I did ok for $25, even if it did end up at $65 to my front door.
If the first little bit of running it had right out of the box is any indication of the step up to “hobby grade”, I may be done running “pancakes” from now on.
Well, maybe “pancakes” xmas morning still might be nice….
Not an expert on this stuff by any means, but I believe this is whats known as “blue box”:
This is obviously someone’s collection of bits (likely an estate sale box lot thing) as the end of the box is hand written in marker “gp 40 Dummy”:
If I use some magnification, it looks like the first stamped letters crossed out are “F7A”. The rest are mostly illegible.
Inside is three sheets:
They had listed it as the “trainamaster”. But at least it had an SD40-2 sheet in it:
And the diesel itself:
All there, all intact. Looks like someone painted it and used waterslide decals as the white lettering is crumbling and turns to dust if even grazed.. Paint looks well done at least. I sides of the shell is all black plastic. Or at least it looks like black plastic, it might be sprayed black..
I pop the shell off for a look:
Little corrosion here and there but it looks complete. I’ll (obviously) give it a full teardown, cleaning and re-lubricating.
As a quick test, I drop it on a section of track and try it. Starts right up. Quiet and smooth. Crawls super slow with just the lightest touch of power. Even the little light bulb still works.
And it’s HEAVY! At least it’s a lot heavier than anything else I been running (admittedly, not much prev experience with “hobby grade” stuff).
The “flywheel effect” when trying to stop is new to me. Run the front trucks off the rail end the first time as I’m used to the pancake diesels stopping on the spot when power is low/off. I adapt to it easily after that first stop and no further issues.
I’m probably going to repaint it in CN livery. From what I can gather, CN only ever had two SDP40’s. They ran lots of SD40-2’s, but next to no SDP’s. Thats ok by me though, this is just more of a fun thing than a historically correct exercise.
Its going to be a good runner when I’m finished I think. I think I did ok for $25, even if it did end up at $65 to my front door.
If the first little bit of running it had right out of the box is any indication of the step up to “hobby grade”, I may be done running “pancakes” from now on.
Well, maybe “pancakes” xmas morning still might be nice….
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Oil works too, but for the longest grease was all I had.
