My Lindsay power truck I got a few weeks back finally made its first run today![:D]
(I don’t have a current picture yet, so I put this one up instead)
The truck is mounted in a heavily modified Athearn CSX GP40. A huge amount of metal had to be milled out of the frame to clear the truck and its flywheel, and a support bracket was made from brass sheet to mount the truck.
And now onto the running part![:D] The Lindsay powered GP40 runs very smoothly at any speed, although its realistic speed range is only up to about 6 volts (which is to be expected with such a small motor). It sounds about like a well tuned Athearn, with a quiet humming/growling from the gears. The overall performance isn’t any better than a modern 4-axle Athearn, but compared to other diesels of the power truck’s age, it’s a fantastic runner. It’ll get a little better as I work on perfecting the whole thing, but for now, it’s still pretty impressive![:D]
Alright! Now some photos of what I’ve done with is thing![:D]
The left side of the fuel tank was damaged when the entire chuck fell out of the drill press and the milling bit caught the fuel tank and rolled around it. There isn’t a lot of damage, so it should be possible to repair and repaint it.
This is only the first assembly of the GP40, and nothing’s perfected yet. You can see that it’s only wired for 4-wheel electrical pickup right now and isn’t very reliable, but I’ll try upgrading it to 6 or 8-wheel pickup later. Everything should fit together and work better with more work.[:D] I’m also going to eventually load it up with detail parts from Cannon and others, so it should also be a great looking diesel when it’s all done.[:D]
Any idea how old that thing might be [?][?][?][?] In any event, it’s a neat looking piece of machinery, and good to see something like that can still run on a new model. [tup][tup][tup] [:D]
Nice work! Just curious. Did you paint the tank/frame/trucks blue? I have that same loco and they are all black.(which I know is incorrect for that paint scheme) If so, what color blue did you use? I know that’s not standard CSX blue.
I had very good luck with Polly Scale 414269 B&O Royal blue if I remember correctly. At the time, it was a dead ringer for the Athearn paint in that scheme.
G Paine, it’s at the most 58 years old, and probably no less than 40. I’m not sure how long it was offered, or if there’s even a way to tell the age, but I’m guessing it’s around 50 years old.
WSOR 3801, I haven’t thought of putting it in one of those. The GP40 was a spare parts engine I had in pieces on my workbench, so I thought “why not put it in there?”
loather, the blue for the tank/frame and trucks is original Athearn.
