Quick and Easy 3rd Rail FP7 Side-Step Upgrade

Been busy with weddings, life, and starting to build a layout. I've spent quite a few hours upgrading AtlasO switches and repairing some used ones I bought years ago. Have done a couple of quick side projects like the one below in the time I wait for epoxy to dry...


Ordered some steps from 3rd Rail to upgrade my FP7's from years ago and took an hour or two over a few days to get these put on my unit.

Pretty simple to do. Used my fingers to twist off the truck-mounted steps.  I could have bondo'd over the brass plugs that broke off in the hole, but figured it won't be seen that much, so I just sanded down that area and touched up with paint.

I took the new steps and used one as a guide and glued it onto the frame where I wanted it.  Then used the hole on the backside of it as a guide and drilled/tapped an 0-80 hole.  Did that for each of the 4 steps.

Then primed and painted the the steps black.  Then dull-coted them so I could pan-pastel them to match the existing weathering after installation.

Then installed them with 0-80 screws.  The trucks still have basically their entire range of rotation.  Looks much better.

Here's a before and after...