Earlier this year, Bowser released one of THE finest HO scale ready to run plastic models I have ever seen; the GMD SD40-2
The good folks at Bowser pulled out all the stops for this model, road specific details, LED lighting, ESU LOK Sound equipped, along with lots of weight for traction!. There were two BC Rail versions released, the factory painted two tone green version, and the later hockey stick scheme. I picked up five units for service on the layout, and I couldn’t leave them clean, so off to the weathering booth!

Bowser has announced a second run, this time they are offering BC Rail units painted in the red white and blue scheme. I’ve got a couple on order…..

So I had to move this freight from the upper to lower, which was really fun! Extra 710 North rolls through the curves near Alzouetta BC.

So it’s not quite Christmas, but I couldn’t resist a couple more locomotives for the railway! Today an Overland SD40-2 and an M630W arrived.. These two will have a future pulling road freights between Prince George,  Chetwynd and Ft St John. The models will get Soundtraxx Tsunami decoders as well as some light weathering before going into service

Yet another RS-18, this time its the 615 in the so called “Hockey Stick” paint scheme.

For this build, I decided to use the Atlas Trainman RS-36, since it has the fuel tank style I need as well as the long hood is fairly close to the RS-18. I dipped into my stash of RS-18 CAT conversion parts for this model. Etched air intake grills, handrail stanchions, and a resin long hood end were added to the basic model. Throw in some tread plate, Kaslo nose and pilots,  and the air cooler grill left over from the 608 project and I was pretty much done:

I was given 4 jars of pre production True Line Trains BC Rail paint to test out before the product hit the market, and chose to use it on he 615. The paint is excellent! Very easy to spray right out of the bottle and covers very well (especially the white, typically a hard color to shoot) My only gripe was the silver had too much paint flecks in it, and took several coats to get a smooth finish. Other than that, I’m really happy with the way the model turned out:

The model will eventually get weathered- lightly. Well, as light as ALCO weathering goes! This model was the last I completed in the old house, once I get my work bench set up I plan on adding some soot on the roof and road grime on the trucks.

Next up for the RS-18 kitbash project was the 608. This model has a different long hood configuration than the 630.

I pretty much used the stock Proto 1000 RS-18 long hood, except for the removal of the large cooling air louvers near the rear of the hood (which just pop off the model). I added 2 new square style air intakes on each side of the hood. The parts were photo etched and produced by Jeff Briggs as part of a project to produce parts for a RS-18 CAT conversion kit. The hand rail stanchions for the 608 came from this kit.

A couple hood doors were re[placed with Cannon parts, one air intake louver was removed and the hole filled with putty, and the Kaslo short hood and cab front kit were added.

For some reason, the pilot ends on the 608 differ from other BCR units. Because of this, I was able to keep the stock Proto pilots. The bars that run along the rear radiator grills are built from strip styrene.

Model now primed:

Painted and Decaled:

Finished model on the old layout:

This model has some running issues. There is too much side play in the truck gears. I have some washers to shim the gears, however I haven’t had a chance to tear the trucks down to install them. Maybe once I have a workbench set up…..

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