I am in the middle of a project; I am turning an Athearn F59PHI into a “dummy” locomotive for the purpose of creating a “special effects” push-pull locomotive.
The locomotive will have a decoder, smoke unit, flashing red ditch/marker lights, cab interior w/lights and a safety becon on the roof (back).
My question to you all; do I have to scratch the cab interior or is something commercially availible? I have plenty of room with the motor gone to scratch something nice, but would rather not do everything from scratch.
It depends how close to the prototype you want to be. You may want to try to get a GP60 or SD60 one from Walthers Proto 2000 or SD70 from Athearn Genesis or Kato.
I’d advise against the smoke unit. You cant really see the smoke, all they are good for is getting all your track and trains greasy. Smoke units are good in large scale trains, but in HO, they arent very good. Plus, in order to power the smoke unit you will need to set your motor circuit to button control because light functions arent powerful enough. Not that this is a bad thing, but you will need yet another decoder to run the motor in the power unit. I have an Amtrak unit, and did what you described (minus smoke). It looks great! good luck!