Diesel #42 and Caboose #8 (1978 Paint Scheme)

I know that my Oakdale Junction Layout is supposed to depict railroad operations in and around Oakdale, California in the 1950's, but I wanted to show you a side project that I was recently working on.  The back story to this project is that my brother used to belong to a model railroad club located in Fremont, California back when he was in high school.  During this time, he purchased four undecorated Athearn Blue Box Baldwin S-12 diesel locomotives with the intention of painting them to match the Sierra Railroad's units.

My brother did paint three of the shells and did nothing with the fourth one.  He painted two of the units in the green with white lettering scheme and a third unit in the all yellow paint scheme which was applied back in 1978 and only to unit #42.  He also had an undecorated 4-window caboose made by Roundhouse that he turned into Caboose #8.

Roundhouse Undecorated Caboose Kit

Fortunately for me, he quit that club a long time ago and ended up giving me all of his HO scale rolling stock which included these items and additional freight cars.  At the time, I did not think much about the Sierra items as I was not modeling anything to do with the Sierra Railroad.  Obviously, my modeling interests changed and I am now modeling the Sierra Railroad (well, at least a small portion of it).

Anyway, this post is to show some pictures of these two items and how I had to fix them to be presentable once again.

Profile of Unit #42 (Note the Rotary Beacon and Engineer)

Left Side View with Conductor in the Cab

Another View of the Right Side

This shell was not in that bad of shape when I got it from my brother.  I did have to repaint a portion of the cab roof and glue the rotary beacon back on top.  One of the applied cab sunshades had broken off, so I had to reattach it and paint the area to cover up the glue.  The one thing that was added to this model that is not on the prototype is the placement of the bell.   It can be seen located between the cab and the exhaust stack.  This is a part that Athearn included when they created the model and had two holes pre-drilled so that it could be mounted in this location.  Athearn also had two holes drilled near-by for a horn, but my brother did not install it on this model.  I have never asked him why he put the bell on and not the horn.

I have a running chassis for this model that does operate on normal DC.  I will most likely put a basic decoder in it with at least three lighting functions so that I could have a forward and reverse headlight and of course I want the rotary beacon to light up as well.  I will have to order the correct air horn to be placed on the roof cab and possibly shave off the bell.  But other than that, this model is a pretty good representative of unit #42.

Caboose #8 was in pretty good shape as well.  The only thing I had to do was to rewire the lighted red marker light my brother installed at the end of the caboose and reattach the conductor he had previously glued to the end platform of the caboose.

Right Side of Caboose

Left Side of Caboose

View with Conductor Checking His Watch

The next few photographs show the working red marker light installed at the end of the caboose.  DCC was fairly new back when my brother put this caboose together so he did not put in a function only decoder inside the caboose to get the light to illuminate.  Instead, he attached a mini slide switch and a single AA battery pack to get the light to turn on when the caboose is at the end of a train.

Lighted Red Marker Light

Illuminated Marker Light and Slide Switch on the Underframe

Close-up of the Mini Slide Switch (Green Paint Dot for "ON")

I had to replace some of the wires my brother had used so many years ago.  Also, one of the light bulb leads had become detached from the battery holder.  I used my basic Radio Shack 20/40 watt soldering iron to attach everything and the lighting circuit was working properly once again.  I even used heat-shrink tubing over the electrical connections as well.  Because the electronic parts take up so much room on the inside of the model, I do not think that I will be installing any type of interior lighting unit.

Internal Electrical Components and Connections

I am fine not having the light activate with the use of a decoder.  I am not going to be running this caboose on the layout very often anyway as it is not appropriate for the time frame I am modeling.  I will probably run it on occasion with the yellow version of #42 for some layout photos.  I'll just have to remember to turn the switch off after use and not store it inside the box with the AA battery clipped into the battery holder.

On a side note, my brother still has the model railroading bug.  He has just moved onto Lionel and shares the hobbies with his three boys.  He is in the process of building a layout in his garage based upon the Pickering Lumber Corporation.  Those O Scale Shays and Heislers he has are bad ass!