of more dependable equipment (read: “lo- comotive-hauled” cars).
A short aside here: I found photos on the web of three other articulated gas- electric cars (aside from the Santa Fe car), all of them in Canada! Canadian National owned two, and the third was a narrow gauge unit that ran on the Newfoundland Railway. It’s quite possible there were others. Fast forward to 2012. I was looking for a project to superdetail toward earning my Master Builder–Motive Power Certifi- cate in the National Model Railroad Asso- ciation’s Achievement Program. I decided to pull out ‘ol No. 15 and see how it had fared in storage all those years. Well, as it turned out, the plastic gears had “shrunk” on the steel shafting over the years and were all split, rendering the drive useless. Sound familiar? I pulled out two other boxcab models, and, of course, they were shot also. Hmm… What to do? A friend suggested I take a look at the newer (sin- gle-motored) version of the Spectrum 44-tonner. (The earlier, twin-motored ver- sion was reported to have its own set of problems.) I did, and found that with only a little work, it would serve as the basis for a rebuilt gas-electric car.
After removing the Spectrum body, I found that if I trimmed the printed circuit board at the ends, the old body from the original MDC conversion would fit snugly on the new drive. This meant losing the LED lighting for the engine, but I decid- ed to go with battery-operated lights, so that wouldn’t be a problem. Using heavy strip and sheet styrene, I made an adap- tor that slipped over the Spectrum frame and motor and would allow the decoder to be snapped into its locating clips on the top of the frame. I added a styrene strip across the lower front edge of the styrene sub-frame. This was the same width and thickness as the metal strip on the original MDC frame. This allowed me to use the MDC pilot beam and pilot castings, which had the advantage of a built-in coupler pocket. The pilot casting was modified to accept a cut-down Cal Scale steam pilot. I added four small tabs from (scale) 2x6 strip at each corner of the new sub-frame, to support the boxcab body at the correct height. Because the boxcab body is a very tight fit, no additional means of fastening the body to the frame was needed. I temporarily removed the detail
Here is a view of the locomotive portion under construction. The decoder has been removed from the Spectrum 44-ton diesel drive to allow it to be trimmed to length to fit the shortened shell. The shell is from the original project, which had utilized a Roundhouse IR/GE boxcab diesel kit. The detail added at that time has been temporarily removed and the body stripped of paint prior to adding additional details, mainly individual grabs and railings made from phosphor bronze wire.
castings from the engine body shell and dumped it into the stripper. In a short time, Richmond & Chicago No. 15 was just a memory. Next, I removed just the bolt head details at the ends of the grab irons and handrails. Using the grab iron and handrail ends as a guide, I drilled holes to accept the new wire replacements. You will need to determine what size drill to use, depending on what size wire is used. I then carefully, using several differ- ent blades, shaved all traces of the hand- rails and grab irons from the body cast- ing. I formed and installed all new grabs and handrails, securing them in place with ACC. I slipped a length of 2x8 under each as a spacer, so they all would stand off from the side by the same amount. With the ACC good and dry, I sliced bolt heads from their sprue and very careful- ly picked each one up with the point of a new No. 11 X-acto blade. Holding them in position just above the end of a wire grab iron, I touched them with some glue, us- ing a very fine-pointed brush. I added two collision posts to the outside of the rear cab wall. These are spaced to sit just out- side the door framing of the trailer. When the two units are connected and on the track, there is no “air gap” between the rear wall of the cab and the front wall of
the trailer. This helps the looks of the unit immeasurably.
One thing I think attracts so much at- tention to the typical gas-electric car is the impressive assemblage of “stuff” that usually decorates the roof at the front end. I have never seen a detailed call-out describing this “stuff,” but over the years have come up with my own descriptions. Most prominent is a large “squarish” box with grilles on the sides. I call this the ra- diator for the gas engine. On this model, I used two Cal-Scale radiator castings front and rear. The sides are some sort of an- cient white metal grille panels from my scrap box, with it covered overall with a piece of strip styrene. At either side of the radiator are Cal-Scale pipe cooling coils — to cool the engine oil? Behind the radiator is a large roof hatch. This would provide access to allow the gas engine to be lifted out of the body if needed. This is from the original Roundhouse kit, as is the large conduit that lays alongside the hatch on the right side. On top of the hatch lie two Cal-Scale air tanks, with wire piping add- ed. Across the rear of the hatch are three spaced exhaust stacks, which if memory serves are alternate stack styles from a Stewart Baldwin engine kit. At the right rear corner of the roof is a small square
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