E60cf

[bradyracing]

Originally Posted by otiscnj

I believe Bachmann also made some of these back in the 80's. Rock Island and Santa Fe are two roadnames I seem to recall. About a year ago, I picked up an American GK GN Big Sky Blue unit at a second hand store in NJ for about $50.

The Rock Island, in bankruptcy blue, was the dual cab version. I have three or four of those. Bachmann made the single cab E60C in Sante Fe and Chessie System which looks very close to Black Mesa&Lake Powell units and the BN 8001 in the pages of the BN annual of 1975.

[bradyracing]

Here are some pics of my E60CF s.

[otiscnj]

Nice collection!! Are they all 'stock' paintjobs, or are some of them custom? I've considered perhaps painting an E33 into Milwaukee at some point.

[bradyracing]

Yes, they are all factory. I need 12 Milw units for four unit trains. The two black units at the back of the line of Conrail units came undec. so they will become MILW. The two Penn Central units and the New Haven unit will become MILW if I can't find more that are more of a basket case then these. These three units came incomplete w/o box.
The Conrail units and the lone PRR unit are on the display wall. They are used and some don't have boxes but whoever put them together and added details did a good job so they will stay as they are.
They Great Northerns and the Virginian are just for my collection. They are mint in the box. The two GNs even have different road numbers because one is American GK and the other is Walthers.
The two BN units may be used as they are because this is a fictional "modern day" Milwaukee and BN at least considered limited use of electrics. One BN unit is mint in the box and the other is used but good shape with its road number changed.
The extreme back row of Santa Fe and Chessie units are the 70's Bachmann E60 units. I'll keep one of each mint in the box and the rest are for projects. I'd like to do one for the BN 8001 and a couple for Black Mesa and a couple for the MILW. With a different drive train of course because brand new they are junk.

[otiscnj]

Brady,
Have you got a layout at this point? Or a trackplan for a future layout? I'm currently planning and starting to construct a layout based on using the Reading//PRR/LV/CNJ between Philly & Scranton, as a branch of the Northeast Corridor-protolancing. I'll be depicting in in the 70's to 2000 time period. I'm into buying up old Tyco GG-1's that I plan to paint into several Reading schemes. I'm also repowering them with Athearn Trainmaster drives, to improve their running characteristics. I've probably got 4 of the Tyco units at this point, with a similar number of trainmasters.

The motive power plan also includes E33's, EF/P-4s(streamlined NH units, made in Brazil), AlP-44, a few E60's, both passenger and freight, as well as GG-1's, and maybe a few wild cards like a Little Joe or two, just to keep things interesting(I know, not an AC unit, but I'll figure out a story to include it).

[bradyracing]

I have a BN/MRL layout circa 1987. It's two foot around the wall. It's boring and crowded and I have an empty house so I'm going to expand into the master bedroom. It's cleared out and I'm going to bore two tunnels through the wall from the old layout to the new. BN and MRL will be at one grade and my new Milwaukee Road will be at a different, higher grade, under the wire, with an interchange point somewhere.
The old layout in the other room will become staging.
I'm going to use two E-33s to pull a mixed freight or a local but its not high priority right now.
The E60CFs are high priority right now getting the details and LEDS like I want them.

There are more pics coming in this E60CF thread. I've been working on a 6.5 foot, dual mainline, under the catenary, outdoor diorama to show the MILW E60CFs

[bradyracing]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature...&v=XgCPPeYmyKw

Anybody that's into electrics watched this? It also happens to a lesser degree in HO. It's always good to test new, scratchbuilt, catenary with a unit, slowly, to look for snags from solder joints. Then you just grind them smooth with a dremel. I use a bachmann E33 to test my new sections of cat because I have about four of them.

[otiscnj]

Thanks for posting! For some reason I ended up laughing at this pretty good.

[otiscnj]

Brady,

New question: are you DCC or DC? If you're DCC, are you doing any remotoring; and what type of decoders are you putting in the E60's you've got? I think you mentioned LEDs also-what kind of lighting do you have in mind?

Thanks!
Otis

[bradyracing]

I'm DC only. I've always been that way and don't know if I'll ever change. I'm running unit trains with two up front and one DP unit at the rear pushing. The units will stay that way so the lights depend on where the unit will spend most of its life in the train. All three units are facing the direction of travel so the lead will be lit up at the front, the trailing unit behind it won't have any, and the DP unit at the rear of the train will have the rear headlights lit up I guess. I still haven't decided how to do the rear of an E60CF DP unit. The rear headlights are horizonal from each other, spaced about four feet apart. How do you make it look like they have been dimmed, shut one off? I don't think that would look right. I don't know. I've seen a picture of a BMLP unit with only one of its rear lights on but the other could have been burned out. I may take one unit and drill out the molded on class lights at the rear and run red fiber optic to see what that would look like.
Have not messed with ditch lights yet. It looks like it would be easy with no walk way in front of the nose. It would be like adding them to an F unit.
Other parts include knuckle couplers, snow plow, mu hoses, rotary beacon, GE a/c unit, aftermarket window set, aftermarket pantograph, and if you leave the visual panels OFF, you have a sharp looking little 6000HP unit.
Something else I'm going to try shortly is since I have about thirty SD9 frames, I'm going to see what I can do to make it look better. I have a buddy with a small to medium sized milling machine and I want to mill off the rear half of the SD9 fuel tank to put air tanks there like on a BMLP E60C. Then I want to mill the sides off the front half of the fuel tank to glue some styrene there and square it off to make it look more like a battery box.
Anyway, I have more pictures to take but after those last couple I posted, my 3.2 megapixal Minolta Z1 doesn't take as good a picture as I thought it did eight years ago. That's where I need an upgrade.