Like Bruce, I’m 1:20.3, so when I visit a SG operation, my locomotives aren’t right. Inspired by Bruce’s RS3 at the Invasion last year, I decided I needed a visiting locomotive too.
Pan Am Railways (nee Guilford) operates in my neck of the woods, so I’ve been seeing their motive power for years. They have started to repaint their locos in Pan Am blue, but there are still lots of Guilford Gray/Orange locos out there. Guilford also buys up old motive power (They still have GP7s and 9s doing yard duty) and they run SD40-2’s, GP38s, etc. Up until a year or so ago, they still had high-nose SD45’s running. Ugly brutes, but powerful.
I intend on modeling a pair of SD45s. The first one will be ST 681, based on the Aristo SD45 in Guilford colors. They numbered it 681, but there are lots of details that are wrong. This thread will chronicle the changes I’m doing to make it more like the prototype.
First obvious problem was the roof fans. As seen in this photo, there are actually three styles of fans on the roof.
And, of course, the Aristo model has some of the right ones, but in the wrong places. So I moved them around, leaving me with this.
Now, what to do with the other two? Chatting with Rooster, we figured out that the USA trains GP7/9 fans were too small, but the GP9 dynamic brake fan was close enough. And, he had sent me one a couple years ago for another project. Here it is for size comparison. Not bad, but needs a bit of modification, which I will get to soon.
I’ll also have to move the rear radiused grab iron, since the fan will now interfere with it.
