I have a fleet of older non-DCC Proto GP-7’s & GP-9’s. Most of these are custom painted to GA RR, A & WP, and W of A.
There are a number of late model PROTO GP-7’s & 9’s withh DCC and sound. My question is will my older shells eaisly fit these newer unitssaving me the costs of upfrading my older units?
Thanks
Larry ( trapped in the ice in Georgia)
I got lots of time to work on my layout - my wife is working in San Francisco all week - imagine a Model Railroader home alone without his wife for a week…[swg]
It seems to me a similar question came up a year or two back on the MR forums, and the concensus was that yes the old shells will fit the new chassis. Keep in mind if cost is the issue, it would probably be cheaper to just add sound decoders to the engines you have. It’s not all that hard.
Some of us are in the same boat but it is because the old chassis is worn out due to use (yes P2K engines have been around a while) or suffer from the cracked gear syndrome, or other such things.
I am facing the same question about the SW9/1200. I love the shell but sense a future need to rejuvenate the power chassis.
If it were not for you wanting to get the DCC & Sound I would suggest getting a set of Atlas, Athearn, Intermountain, or Kato trucks and slipping them in the old frames as they are all pretty much clones of each other.
I lucked into a bunch of the Proto 1000 engines that someone had started to modify and all they had done was to ruin them but I bought them for “parts” and got them cheap. In the deal I ended up with spare trucks, motors, universals, and all of the related parts for keeping my older Protos on the rails.
Sometimes you’re the “bigdog”, and then sometimes you’re the “hydrant”…
NO THEY DON’T!!! This is what bothers me about this site sometimes. People make a statement like this one and people new to the hobby take it as gospel. I’ve got a few Proto locomotives that are over 10 years old and they are far from junk. Old Proto loco’s are some of the best available.
I agree with you on that one, especially when you consider what they can be picked up for as either used or NOS. I 've snagged many an early Proto for $25-30 still “new in the box”.
That’s pretty hard to beat even if it does eventually crack a gear. And just for the record, I have Overland diesels that have cracked “gearboxes” but does Overland have the parts to replace them…NO!! So you either pick up a power chassis, $50-100, or make them a $300-400 piece of scenery. Tom Marsh’s comment to me about the problem was “sounds to me like you need to buy a new one”. I didn’t buy a new one, I sold most of mine and bought the new at that time Proto’s and they’re still cooking right along with only one cracking a gear, but I have the parts from Proto.
I guess the same can be said for most of them though…
I took to heart your comment about the Proto Locomotives. I had two brand new Proto GP-7’s which had actually been in storage about 15 years from my previous layout. Now that I am back and at it again I wanted the units upgraded to DCC and Sound. I contracted an established DCC distributor to convert the units. He gave up on one beacuse he said the trucks and gears would not run - he even contacted Walthers for help and they declined.
Therewere brand new never out of the box units
Anyway he did complete the one unit which I have recieved and have been operating although occasionally it has a definite cllunking noise at times.
Today it stopped and has a dead short grounding out the DCC system.
My question is, hopefully if you have expierence with these locomotives, what should I start checking for that would be causing a short? All of the wiring seems to be in place and visibly there appears to be nothing damaged or out of place.
As I recently posted on another thread, Walthers/Life-Like recently brought in a fresh batch of replacement wheels with gears for the older P2k and P1K.
For Early PROTO 2000(R) BL, FA, E8, GP7/9/18/20/30/60 & PROTO 1000™ F3
Walthers Part # 920-584408
HO scale, $5.98, currently in stock at Walthers
Just saw this thread, and the answer to your question is “Yes”, although in some cases it takes a (very) little work. And if you look for bargains on the “donor” locos, it can also be done for less than the cost of a good sound decoder and speaker.
The “older” Proto locos I’ve converted to DCC and sound are two P1K F3A’s, two P2K GP18’s, and one P2K GP9.
The P1K F3A’s needed to have a roof brace in the rear of the shell removed (The “donor” P2K F’s didn’t have this brace). Otherwise it was a drop-in swap.
On the GP9 and GP18’s, it was a little more work. On a couple (all?) of them, I had to remove the interior “louver boxes” from the end of the long hood. Then I ACC’ed a piece of .010 black styrene on the inside of the shell to cover the hole, trimmed the mounting pins from the original exterior grill and ACC’ed it back in place. I also had to shorten most of the light bars.
You could forego the black styrene if you want the “see through” grill look, but I didn’t think it looked right on mine.
Also, what I do when I’m done is put the new but “wrong” shells on the old chassis, and get a few dollars each for them to help bring down my total cost.