I picked up a Walthers Proto 1000 Milwaukee Road C-Liner shell and wanted to mount it on a dummy chassis. I was told by a LHS guy that Walthers never made a dummy chassis and that the one that Ahm’s made would take a bit of modification (drill some holes, add shims, …) to get it to match up correctly. I’m wondering if I would be better off trying to get a powered Walthers chassis and just gut it. Ideas?
Curious why you need a dummy C-Liner. The AHM models are light years behind the Life Like models, no comparison whatsoever. Real poor trucks, etc. No idea if a new shell could be mounted on one, its not something that I’d be interested in, and I’ve made several models using the AHM units way back when because they were the only ones available.
I have the shell, but I don’t need another powered diesel at this time. Was just going to have it tag along as part of a consist.
Proto or Walthers have never made a dummy chassis for the C liner.
David B
What do you mean you don’t need another powered diesel? We can never have enough powered units, why bother with another dummie that can’t pull anything? Doesn’t make sense to me!
BTW, I have a few over stock Proto CP C-Liners, if you want one cheap, email me. And they’re all powered.
For a variety of reasons over the years I acquired a large number of the AHM C Liners – including one B unit dummy by the way. What is odd is that over the years the details were changed in subtle ways, and in particular some came with trucks that were simply not correct while others had trucks that were much much closer to FM accuracy (and AHM used the same trucks under their EMD BL2 for some reason). Replacing the wheels would be step 1.
To me gutting a perfectly good operating locomotive just to have a dummy wastes money unless you have a good use for the removed innards. If you can find an AHM with the more nearly correct truck side frames the process of fitting it to the Walthers shell cannot be all that challenging.
I think I sold my entire box full of AHM C liners, including 3 operating engines, the B dummy, and a half dozen spare shells, for $15 at a swap meet. If you can find a similar deal I’d give it a go.
Dave Nelson