I’m using the post-holiday downtime to make some progress on a few projects I’ve got going: repairing my GP10 5863, detailing my new SW1500s: 9590 and 9594, and detailing my new GP7 5601.

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First up, my newest additions, and models I’ve been waiting almost my entire life for: Conrail SW1500s. I’ll have a more in-depth article about what I’m doing to my pair of them, but here’s a quick rundown of what’s visible in the photo above. I did some detail painting: painting over some of the warning labels that weren’t visible in later photos of the unit, adding white to the handrails, and painting some of the area below the frame blue (jacking pads, fuel filler area and step well edges). As I said, this is still a work in progress, so I’ve got more to do cleaning it up. I also painted over a few windows, as many of Conrail’s SW1500s were plated over by the mid 80s.

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Next up were some repairs to 5863. It’s been in service now for ten years, and time was taking a bit of a toll. Some paint had chipped around the stacks, with some metal showing through. A few swipes of blue fixed that up. The other fix was reattaching the horn on the long hood. It had fallen off at the recent B&O show and needed to be reattached.

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Next up was 5601. I recently acquired it from a friend and decided to do some work on it. This included detail painting: making the walkways black, painting the handrails white, and touching up detail parts. Those included the bell mounted on the long hood and the empty mounting rails for cab sunshades.

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The bell and bracket are visible in this end-on shot, as is another modification: removing the pilot foot boards.

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There’s still quite a bit to do on all of the new acquisitions, but I figured it was worth showing off where they are.

One last parting shot from the evening. A pair of geeps on the NCR local:

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