OK, so clearly I’m older than I thought. I took advantage of the recent Atlas sale on HO Loco body shells. Bought a New Haven RS-11 shell to replace an undec unit I’d bought “not so long ago”, or so I’d thought. Turns out my new shell does fit on my “blue and yellow box” chassis, but is really made for a newer drive train chassis that has coupler pockets. I can glue styrene pieces to the underside of the end walkway to make a support for the coupler box, so I guess I should be thankful that the shelll fits at all. My question is, how many different iterations of Atlas RS-11 phases did I miss while my blue and yellow unit sat in the closet? Anyone else have a better idea on mounting couplers? TIA, Ken
Looks like at least two variations. Scroll down the list at http://www.atlasrr.com/hoparts.htm to get exploded diagrams. If what you have is different, then you can add one more.
One of the diagrams shows the coupler pinned to the walkway. If this is what you have, can you tap out this hole and mount a Kadee box?
I can’t answer the question about how many iterations of RS-11s there are, but I recently did the same thing with a pair of Alco C425s:
In some of those pictures, you can see the coupler mounting pads. It’s just spare styrene (IIRC, a .10 and a .03 sheet glued together) superglued to the frame. A kadee coupler box was modified (cut all the tabs off then file it some more on the sides) to fit through the pilot opening. I drilled the holes for the mounting screws so the front of the coupler box was flush with the hole in the pilot.
The bodys were modified a little too. All of the tabs that held the hoods to the sill (all of the smaller ones, but leave the 6 larger ones) were cut and sanded flat. Then the locating tabs for the pilot details on rear (inside) of the pilot were sanded flat to clear the coupler mounting pads.
Based on the succes of those Centuries, I’m wanting to do the same to get a BN RS11.
Max, Looks like I get to add one. Both exploded drawings on the Atlas site show separate parts for running board and body shell. The decorated shell I received has body shell and running board in one piece.
Packer, My fix will be along the lines of what you did. Build up a support from the underside of the front walkway (the metal frame of the made in Japan chassis I have has nothing to add a coupler to) and insert a “de-eared” Kadee box from the front and drill and tap for a screw.
Thanks, guys for your thoughts, Ken
One other way would be to order up a new RS11 frame (p/n 877400)from Atlas, and transfer the mechanical bits to it. This will give frame-mounted couplers, and fix the wheelbase issue from the older models. If you run heavy trains, the old style mounts would deflect; the walkways would bend up. The newer frame eliminates this problem.
Thanks Mike for the tip. Let me think this over. Hmmm, Cut multiple small pieces of styrene, fit each one of them up the walkway, glue, repeat, repeat again, measure so the coupler isn’t too low, cut, fit and glue somemore, center, drill and tap the hole, do the same on the other end, risk bending up the walkway with a heavy train…or spend $7.00 on a new frame. New frame it is! Ken