Paint Shop

[Rufus T. Firefly]

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[Tom Dempsey]

Working on two of them right now.

[sarge]

So, the aforementioned P&D F7 B-unit is on the workbench, inspired by the arrival of a little box of drive components and goodies from Jay Criswell.

Thanks, Jay!

The drive is done and the body is getting near ready for its date with the paintbooth. The intent is to be run with the GP38 I showed earlier.

Anyone else building anything at the moment?

[Jay Criswell]

Sarge,

Your most welcome.

What am I building? Drive components. Numerous orders for new drives and I'm out of some of the bits.

Oh yeah, shipping out more Weaver/CLW parts to a friend in need!!

Jay

[Tom Dempsey]

Still working on an FA-2 and a GP-9, and collecting parts for a GP-35 (hoping Jay is making progress on trucks for the new solid CLW chassis).

[sarge]

Here is the F7b, waiting for short-box couplers to arrive, otherwise ready to go behind the GP38-2 showed earlier in the thread.

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[Jay Criswell]

Sarge,

Looking good. Who's trucks are those (yeah, I know they're yours, who produced them)?

Tom,

I have all the parts and assembly instructions. I want to make a fixture to bore the journals but other things just seem to keep me from doing so.

Jay

[sarge]

Jay:

Old plastic Weaver with a lick of paintwork.

[De Bruin]

Nice mate for that Gp-38 Brian; now you got me wanting to add some some additional black and white-worm power to my auto parts train power set. I hope to get some additional cars and some more PC power done this year. I have a hankering to try cleaning up one of those ultraline Weaver RS-11's with some P&D goodies like grabs, fan grill etc and reworking the deck with evergreen strip to a more appropriate looking side frame. Fun stuff 8^)

[sarge]

So, when I'm not doing the odd US outline thing, I work on stuff for the UK layout.

Not paintshop per se, but building a whole raft of structures gets a little tedious, hence the occasional break needed to refresh the mind. This shows what the magnitude of the project has been:

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[sarge]

What with all that's going on, I figured this was as good a time as any to tackle this little guy.

You might remember one of Jim's columns were he did a "Diecast Diesel Quiz" and one model was a General Models SW1, painted in New York Central. At the time I threw my hat in the ring saying if he ever wanted to rehome it, I'd love to play with it, tweak it here and there, power it, and put it to work.

So, not long ago we revisited that chucking of the chapeau, and it arrived here. Unfortunately, in one of the very few times I have had issues with USPS, the box had apparently taken a header off a high-speed belt, and I had a bit of a kit again. Tried to reassemble, but the paint had taken a beating, so onto the bench for a rebuild, into the booth to be reshot, and then lettered with Micro, glased, MV lenses with the centres drilled, lights, and a GM drive-truck tuned and installed. Protocraft couplers as a final touch, and it looks pretty nice for its age, if I might be so bold.

Jim said I should add it here, so here it is.

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[De Bruin]

Nice Job! That SW1 is an interesting variation on the GMC NW casting, you've certainly done it justice with the cigar band scheme and the added goodies, especially that plate above the stack- pure NYC look, that is. Excellent to see, thanks for posting.
Pete

[sarge]

Thanks Pete.

The spark grate was actually already on it, so not my doing other than to repair and resolder it.

Curious what you mean by a variation of the NW. I believe GMC made these as a descrete kit from the NW2. Not the first GMC SW1 I've come across. Of course you might know something I don't...

It has been great fun to see what can be done with a rather old piece. It runs quite well, and would be fun to find a second GMC power truck to see if I could double power it.

[ScaleCraft]

I have one. What drive does yours have? Most all I have seen have the vertical motor in the nose, as does mine.

[R.K. Maroon]

Curious what you mean by a variation of the NW. I believe GMC made these as a descrete kit from the NW2.

Here is what I know (or what I think I know): All Nation introduced the "600-HP Diesel Switcher" in their first catalog:

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The year was 1954. This was just after they had acquired General Models, originator of the NW-2 (called the "1000-hp Diesel Switcher" in the catalog).
Diecast tooling is very expensive (and perhaps part of the reason that both Atwater and General Models went belly up in the process of producing two of the highest-selling, widely admired diesels of the O-scale world). To try to get more sales out of their investment in the NW-2 tooling, the SW-1 was made by saw-cutting the NW-2 shell to shorten it. This can be verified by noting that SW-1 shell has the same casting number (4001, I believe) as the NW-2. My guess is that the SW-1 project was originated by General Models but didn't make it to market until All Nation purchased the inventory. I say this because there was only that one run. Either way, one might surmise that the SW-1 had a short product life because the shortening of the shell was a manual process.

Nortonville Phil found a magazine article on the SW-1 that I believe was concurrent with the model's release. I have a copy at the shop and will scan and post unless Phil beats me to it.

As to Dave's comment regarding the drive. Note in the advertisement above that the SW-1 was listed in the catalog with the same broad choices of drives that the NW-2 had. I have always questioned whether this was a mistake made in the hurry to introduce the model. I know for a fact that the original GMC drive fit the SW-1, but I am not so sure there is room for a standard All Nation drive, much less two of them. However, I was not so curious about this as to investigate.

Jim