This is really inspiring! Back in the mid 90's i too received a powered Blue Box P42 from my dad. Over the years it became banged up, broken/missing parts from a young kid who was always excided to run it on a loop of track on the floor. I kept it over the years in its original box thinking someday i will fix it. About 5 years ago i did just that. I had to strip the old paint for it was in bad condition from a young me trying to weather it. I had to order some new parts for many of the original parts were long gone/broken. After adding a DW super detail kit, paint and decals, I added a genesis motor, ESU Lok V5 sound decoder with Scale Sound System speaker. I also added many LED's to make it light up like the 4th of July. After many hours of work its back on the track pulling my coast starlight. Seeing your video put a smile on my face knowing you went through a similar situation. Great work! Thanks for sharing your story!
I'm glad to hear I'm not the only one who attempted a similar project! I wish I knew where my original P42 was, but I'm not sure it made it from one house to another when we moved. This was such a nostalgic project and it was a lot of fun to work on, thank you for watching!
Looks great! Just wanted to share how I apply rust on my wheels, I use dry pigments and mix them with a little bit of rubbing alcohol and apply with a small soft brush. If the pigment mix is too thick, I put in more alcohol to thin it out. If I don’t like the finished appearance I can simply remove it with wet Q tips or a toothbrush and start over.
I do believe the blue box P42s are some of the best of the blue box and I always seem to snag them if the price is right at train shows. Thanks for watching, hope it gives you some good ideas!
Hey very nice, congratulations to the great work! 👍 You have convinced me to buy an older Athearn P42 and convert it myself, similar like you've done it.
I received the Loksound 5 today and have been playing with its functions in decoder pro to get the lighting to behave as I'd like, so I'll probably have a video showing performance up soon! I have not seen Amtrak706s file before your mentioning it, and I just emailed him to see about purchasing because the video of it was fantastic. I usually order my ESU decoders with files pre-uploaded as I don't have a Lokprogrammer just yet, but I think I definitely need that file for a future uploading onto the decoder. Thank you for the suggestion and thank you for watching!
It is good to see a really good modeller ,who knows how to detail locos, & power them,& decode them, etc. Its a pleasure to watch your work. Do you have a layout?
You're too kind, I still consider myself very much a novice where it comes to repowering and detailing and DCC installs (I'm slowly getting better with the wire management I think). No layout just yet although I have plans for a small narrow gauge WWI trench railway, and an HO shelf switching layout, I'm sure I'll cover those in a future video when the time comes. At the moment I do not have much space for the 'dream layout', so I'm devoting the time to detailing and learning some skills along the way, but occasionally I run at the local club which is nice. Thank you very much for watching!
I do love the blue box models, they really are robust and easy to add details and update so I definitely plan on doing more! I have an SW1500 I've been working on, but re-motoring an athearn switcher is definitely more involved with the limited space. Thank you for watching!
Thank you! It's a fiddly kit but the additional Details West pieces are really worth the trouble I think. I'd like to do a GP9, an F7, and maybe a GP30 sometime soon. Have fun with the GP40!
@@Alerrecks thanks for the heads up! Early-gen Diesel power is not really my thing so I'm not always sure what to look for. I'll stick with proto for the GP9 then (looking to do a pumpkin orange Amtrak MOW GP9)
@@yardsounds90 a company called front range made a new shell for the GP9, which is correct to scale. But yes! Proto geeps are great excluding the gears and chunky plastic grab irons.
@@Alerrecks definitely aware of the gear issues with proto but that can definitely lead to some nice discounts, and I've also looked at the walthers mainline GP9 as well as a decent start, they seem like a solid item and good as a blank canvas for detailing. Thanks for the heads up!
