Now that I had a good fleet of C425’s I needed to start work on some RS-18’s. The RS-18 was a common loco on the Dawson creek Sub, as well as on many local and yard jobs on the Prince George Sub. Overland Models produced 2 versions of the RS-18 in brass, however I’ve always thought the front windows on these models were over sized. The first RS-18 I decided to build was the 630, which was the last ALCO powered RS-18 on the railway.

So, I started with a Proto 1000 RS-18, stripped the CN paint from it, cut out most of the long hood and added a cab and short nose kit from Kaslo Shops:

The middle section of the long hood on the prototype differs from the Proto model, so I used a hood section from an Atlas RS-36 body shell. I had to remove a few doors and replace them with correct sized doors which I cut down from Cannon EMD doors. The louvers came from a set of Andy W C425 air intakes.

Both front and rear stock pilots were removed and replaced with parts from Kaslo. A large headlight was added in between the rear number boards as well as a dual headlight above the large one.

At this point I hit a road block. I needed to replace the stock Proto fuel tank with a different type, however part of the stock tank was cast into the frame and hacking away the metal would weaken the frame structure. I then found a Proto 2000 RS-27 on ebay for cheap, and found the RS-18 body shell would drop right onto the RS-27 drive! As an added bonus, the RS-27 fuel tank is really close to the version found on the prototype! After that was done, I cut up some tread plate that came from a company that I don’t like to mention since he took me for $300. Anyway, here’s the model pretty much ready for the paint booth. I’ll mention that I had to raise the height of the stock Proto RS-18 long hood, since when the model was designed the engineer’s messed up on the height of the hood!

The model was then primed, painted and decaled. I kept it clean as shown for only a few days..

Then the model was weathered to represent several years of service