MikeOwnby
Active Member
I'm *really* proud of this one, just because it was such a bear to create and is such a unique frankencritter of a locomotive. Melding an N-scale Athearn SD70 and a Kato SD70ACe was a very interesting and time-consuming project. The complexities of the sonic bonnet paint job actually paled in comparison to the kit-bashing. One very very cool side effect of the kit-bash and its problems was that the light pipes for the Kato nose's ditch lights wouldn't fit over the Athearn chassis. I initially thought about trying to heat and re-bend them the way I needed, but figured the probability of success there was almost nil. Then I noticed the small ledge behind the nose wall where the light pipes emerged, and realized I could very likely fit two SMLEDs on there. I cut the light pipes off flush where they emerged just behind the wall of the nose and glued the SMLED's to that point, and thus I have separately working, alternately flashing ditch lights on this thing. You guys in HO and larger won't realize what a huge deal it was to manage that in tiny tiny N-scale, but that's something only my ScaleTrains models have had up to this point and it's a small miracle I managed to fit it in there. This guy has ESU Loksound 73100 installed also, and note that I managed to successfully color the DB fan and radiator fans as stainless steel.
The image below shows the major cuts and pastes I had to make, with the pink indicating the original AC cabinet and railings of the SD70ACe nose, and the blue being the original battery box and railing position on the SD70 body. The cabinet indicated by red had to have the bottom half of it cut off and replaced with a patch to match the prototype, and to even allow the battery boxes to be relocated.
You can also see that I had to create a new bottom line for the two hood doors (which could no longer extend full height as before) over the battery boxes, again as per the prototype. The battery box had to be cut away from the walkway and moved back, of course, to clear the AC cabinet, which meant the handrails had to be cut and hopefully mated back together, meaning new holes drilled in the walkway for those, and a very fervent prayer sent up as I snipped the handrail and prayed I got it right. I mostly did, with just the slightest of misalignment but at least no huge gap that I couldn't fill. The back portion of the AC cabinet had to be cut off, but the handrails above the AC cabinet had to be cut off from the front end so that I'd still have the railing that swooped down to the lower rail. That took a little bit of figuring out and nail biting, and I ended up with a millimeter gap there simply b/c the ACe handrails turned to the rear before they quite got down to the SD70 handrails. No way to avoid or fix that. But that tiny gap and joining the cut in the SD70 handrail behind the battery boxes was solved using Micro Krystal Klear, which is one of the few glues that will actually stick to that handrail plastic, with the added benefit that it's designed to fill gaps and thus did an excellent job there between the ACe and SD70 rails.
For the cab to align to the body, and using the framing from the nose assembly rather than the SD70, the coupler pocket ended up a millimeter or two too low, but that was easily fixed by putting a 2004 coupler on the front instead of the usual 1015, and I had to shave just a tiny bit off the bottom of the model just behind the snow plow, and move the snow plow up that same amount.
All in all, it turned out GREAT, I think, though I had a minor meltdown at least a half dozen times when I was just absolutely sure there was no way this was going to come together and I was just going to have an expensive mess. The fact that I ended up with it looking pretty darn good and having flashing ditch lights to boot? I mean, I am so dang happy right now. It's not perfect down to the last rivet, but it's not too shabby either.
