Lionel’s recent SD40's have become some of my favorite diesels made. They're good performers and loaded with great detail from the trucks, fuel tanks, and the road specific details like the handbrakes and roof detail arrangements.
That’s not to say they’re perfect, but they also seemed like a good avenue to get started in 3 Rail Scale. Fortunately, Lionel made it easy with these with the Kadee mounting pads and screw holes they supplied, but thanks to Rich Bautista's Blu-Ray video All About the Trains, I decided to take them to the next level.
The first step was cutting the Electrocouplers off and mounting the Kadees. I kept the Electrocouplers in case, and Kapton taped off the wire ends to prevent any shorting. I'm using the medium shank 740's.
To fix the kinematic pilots, I followed Rich's exact techniques by removing the return spring and drilling and tapping through the pilot and frame. They're then screwed together with 2-56 bit screws by HobBits front and back.
Next was to use plastic strips by Evergreen Scale to cover the open air gaps between the trucks and the frame. They were cut appropriately, super glued, and painted black.
The ends of the hoses on both front and back pilots were also painted silver with a Testors paint marker.
Last part was easily the most tedious part - extending the handrails with K&S music wire. I originally going to go with 0.032” wire, but I ended up picking up some 0.025" diameter while I was on vacation at Strasburg in June. I think it looks better and is easier to bend and cut.
For the long hood end, I decided it’d be easier to just Dremol cut the ends than replace the whole railings. Definitely don’t regret it. All the holes in the pilots were drilled with a #61 drill bit.
Last, but not least, the handrails are repainted to match the rest of the locomotives. I mixed some Testors light and dark blues to get a color that matched the Conrail blue reasonably well.
That’s pretty much it! I may move the truck side frames in a bit and definitely will give a bit of light weathering later on, but I’m very happy overall with the results. The finished outcome definitely transformed these already great models into something even better!
