Hey there everyone. I have been busy the last few days making some mods to an Athearn Blue Box SD40-2 locomotive. While putting DCC in this type of engine is not hard to do I found that getting lights in the front and rear to be a little more of a challenge with the normal DCC kit. My first attempt eneded up with the roof of the cab melted from the grain of rice bulb that I used. Anyway check out the link below to see the project step by step from my website.
http://www.model-rails.com/projects/athearn3.html
Thanks for looking, Also any feedback on the website is much appreciated, but please note that right now I am just starting it’s construction so things are a little bland… I am working on that!
The melted shell syndrome. It took a highly detailed Atlas RS1 shell meltdown to get me started installing LEDs in everything I own and other peoples decoders I instal for them.
Good luck.
Pete
Nice job. Bulbs do look nice, but I too now remove all bulbs and replace with LED’s. This is particularly irksome with the new Athearn Genesis where Athearn insists on using bulbs that have a shortish shelf life!
Thanks for the comments guys. I have had the train running all day long on my test loop of track and it ran flawless. I am very happy with it. Before this my Athearn BB engines were just sitting in boxes. I am going to be modifying another one here soon as I get some LED bulbs.
Massey
LOL
I keep a large supply of Athearn bulbs on hand for just that reason.
Rich