well I thought I could pull this project off, Chop-nosing one of my E-33’s. I measured, and cut one side, then measured again (spot on!) and cut the rest. What I wound up with was a lopsided-mess. or what looks like one. Oh, and when I put it together… the frame was in the way!! (oops, mybad) So I cut a pit of the frame off, and now I need to either hack a larger portion off, or fabricate an extention to the chop-nose. I’ve thought about fabricating a new cab, but I like the style of the existing one…
so now what do I do?
(eventually the E-33’s will be rebuilt into E-75’s with -9 style cabs… but let’s get cronological here. I’ll keep my chop-noses as chop-noses and go with new units for the wide-cabs.)
Good looking photos, but because of the black color, the picture looks slightly underexposed. Could you could edit it so that more of the surface area of the nose could be seen? If I’m looking at it correctly, it appears that you can extend the nose.
Just a suggestion. Walk away from it for a long while. Come back to it when you’re in a fresh mood and decide which would be the best route for you to take that would yield you the satisfactory results you’re looking for. The easiest route isn’t always the best, but take the route that you know you’ll be able to accomplish with your skill level, even if it takes an extended period of time.
bingo dave, that’s kinda the look I’m going for. If my E-33’s are gonna be runnign into the modern day (albeit with a few rebuilds inbetween) why not chop-nose 'em?
I wish there were more options out there. I’d love to have a few of those units runnign arround as if they went into production, as well as a BCR modern electric. I know those at least were made in brass, but I’m not spendign more than either one of my trucks cost on 1 locomotive, much less a handfull…
I’m gonna wait until the weekend, then completly dissasemble the chassis, so I can trim the frame down a bit. I’ll make that nose fit one way or the other. For the rest of the fleet, I’ll take better measurements and try top be more carfull… heck I might even get some scrap wood and make a jig for 'em.
I’m either gonna move the pans back a slight bit, or have them extend over the front. The equipment (i’m not sure what was there to begin with) was moved and or shrunk down a bit. The noses were chopped durign the -2 conversion, so there was a bit more work done besides the nose-job.
as far as the completly new cab, I’ll wait for the E-33-2 to E-66 upgrade. The E-66 is a late 90’s rebuild of the E-33-2. New cabs and rectifiers, basically a new locomotive.
oh, and if i can’t salvage the cab of the 1st unit i’ll throw on an old F-7 cab, a favorite trick for Fred’s wreck rebuilds from the late-70’s to late 80’s when a plethora of well worn F-7’s were layign arround the shops mostle gutted but with intact cabs. The V&AL’s first GP-60 had only been on property for a few weeks when the cab was destroyed in a collision. If now runs arround with a F-9 cab on a GP-60 body…
More than 10 years ago I got a wild hair that I wanted to attempt an N-Scale Paducah-rebuild; my nose-chopping effort looked more like a mobile home that had lost to a tornado. I still have the remains of the Atlas body shell and the mechanism and I do suppose I’ll give it another college-try at some time in the future!
