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Re: SHS SW's


 

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Yes, Red Caboose used the basic Atlas drive under the GP-9 shell they developed and sold most of those as complete ready-to-run units, both in scale and three-rail.? They were pretty expensive and apparently RC lost money on?the project.? They sold quite a few of the shells as kits afterward.
P&D under Pat Mucci had serious visions for O scale locomotives.? After Kemtron effectively went out of business P&D bought the production fixtures for their GP-7 and RS-3 (after an intermediate owner--Railtex--produced the stock kits and sold them with CLW drives) and began serious upgrading; initially the upgraded GP (offered in the several phases as both GP-7 and GP-9) used a CLW drive but eventually they developed their own first-rate drive, based on Weaver components (after Weaver replaced theirs with cheap China crap drives to allow space for three-rail electronics) and with the excellent lost-wax Blombergs from OCS in Korea.? Incidentally, the P&D upgraded kits stopped when Weaver introduced their plastic RS-3 (and later the RC plastic GP-9's), as the P&D brass kits were excellent but necessarily expensive and required soldering skills to assemble.
About the same time P&D got access to Atlas F units¡ªI've heard the Austrian government refused to allow the export of the dies¡ªand improved the detail, so that various F types and phases of each type were represented (why Atlas thought an F-9 was a better choice than F-3's or F-7's is something no one seems to know).? By the time P&D had developed their improved version of the Weaver drive it was also modified to fit under their improved F shells; the P&D drives for the F units and the GP-9's are configured differently, even though they use the same components.
Almost certainly more information about O scale diesels than anyone wanted to know.

And, yes, the original Enhorning drives left MUCH to be desired; the Port Able after-market scale conversion drive for AF (later bought by Beveridge) used Enhorning sideframes.



Jace Kahn




From:[email protected] <[email protected]> on behalf of Bob Werre <bob@...>
Sent:?Thursday, December 12, 2024 11:25 AM
To:[email protected] <[email protected]>
Subject:?Re: [S-Scale] SHS SW's
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You are doubly? correct about Enhorning because they can still live under different names.? I've never run my BN unit but my understanding was that the drive was pretty weak.? To that end, the folks at Red Caboose made a new drive for those and sold the result RTR, but I believe it ended up being a GP 7/9.? I photographed them for a RC ad dressed as a GN unit.? And also I think it was P&D hobbies also was involved in something similar--but that just speculation on my end!

Bob Werre
PhotoTraxx

My first O "scale" (not O gauge ie Lionel) was one of those F units. That purchase (at a train show in the early '80s) opened the floodgates to my getting involved in 1:48 size.
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I think the basic platform is very..."do-able"; I have acquired several more and on each I have altered either the shell, drive train or both, just because.
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Atlas must have sold a bunch, as there are almost always some for sale on eBay...
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Come to think of it, maybe they could be considered the "Enhorning of O scale"; a good enough product that just didn't quite make the cut.
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Mark in Oregon
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