Review: O-scale - 3rd Rail/Sunset Models - Southern Crescent E8A's

Sunset Models/3rd Rail just released their E8 project to the masses.  Southern made the final production list and I was asked to and volunteered in the neighborhood of about 20 hours of review time for this project between the body CAD, rooftop airtank CAD, and decal artwork.  I have come to realization that no matter how many suggestions, fixes, etc. that I make, the factory is bound to not fix everything I suggested.  Oh well.  I have learned this is something even HO guys have to deal with and unless I shell out $3k/model, its how it is.

Considering the process that these go through, I have to say that these turned out pretty well. They will be acceptable to most.  They are acceptable to me, but I always take everything I own to the next level.  Rivet counter? No. Spotting features? Yes. I can fix a lot of the flaws, but having studied these closer and looked at some of the lettering discrepancies from the prototype, I need to figure out what I want to do.  If I decide to reletter some of these to more closely match the prototype, I may go further and repaint these into black tuxedo to match other units I have. I am undecided at this time, as I won't have real time to touch these for awhile. Remember my SD9 review?  Well those are still sitting apart waiting for me to finish the corrections list.

This is an aesthetics review, I have yet to have time to run these, but I am extremely curious to hear what the QSI Q3 decoder sounds like with TWO speakers in each unit, since E8's had dual prime movers in them, and QSI has a patent on stereo sound, allowing for a nice one-decoder solution for the sound.

I bought 3 units,which were numbered 1-3 on the box, 6901, 6909, 6911.  The fourth number is 6915.

Below is the photo review. Click on photos for larger versions if you so desire.

What 3 sunset shipping boxes look like next to each other.

 2R version of instruction manual in box.

Yellow inner box hiding under the protective styrofoam.

Glad to see Green under the wrapping.  Looks like a SAL unit or two made it into SOU boxes and vice versa.

 The parts baggy that comes with the units.  Note that the spark arrestors are in this bag.  They are not very detailed...so I will replace these with my own brass ones once I get some more made up.

Protective foam around the engine.

All 3 units; Front View. (styrofoam bit on 6911's NB)

Noses look good to me.  Note the missing firecracker antennas to the right of the horns.  Scott left these off to reduce shipping damage, since he had a lot break on the SD7/SD9 project.  I thought they were also supposed to be in the parts baggy, but never made it...

 Roof view.

 The spark arrestor by the exhaust port.  Note that I guess the Factory was thinking you needed to glue these in, as they are not snug or snap in place...

Yes 6911's door came stuck open.  I was able to close it with a screwdriver.

Some more various angles.  

 Engineer View.  

Two paint mistakes:

1. The top grab iron should have matched the imitation aluminum.

2. The grab iron by the pilots are silver when they should also be imitation aluminum.

One could also surmise the curvature around the lower portion of the green area is also wrong and doesn't start curving up soon enough.  Something I will just live with.  It also makes the crescent logo look too small, when I believe it is actually rather close in size. with the way the artwork drawings are done (Side/Front View only...no angled nose view), this is hard to tell them how to do correctly.

For comparison:

This was to show that the grills already have some buckling in them.  The grill style may not match every unit's style, I noticed SOU units had both styles.  A factory process limitation...

Some rooftop pipe and spark arrestor close ups.

 View of the etched grills and roof from the side.

 Evidence I saw showed they had dual steam generators.

 Close up of the roof/nose.

 Rear of the units.

 Rooves of the units.

 I had 2 units that had bent-in MU hoses.  Scott needs to figure out how to prevent that in the future.

View of the bottom.

 Artistic View 1

 Artistic View 2

 

 This is as big as the gap gets when Kadees are taught.

 

 AA consist

 AAA consist

 AAA consist overhead view

 Two engineer views. 

Note: The spacing of the numbers is quite off.  Something that kind of irks me, but I could also live with.  If I can't live with it, these units are getting the tuxedo treatment.

For Number Spacing Comparison:

 There be rivets on the angle step.  Nice!

Note: From the photos I had, it looked like the kickplates had been painted over with both Green and the Im. Aluminum.  Factory missed this one too and only the green was done.

 Close up of the SOUTHERN.

Its hard to photograph the cab interior, but it looks pretty good.  Just needs to be painted light gray instead of the seafoam green.

One last nose shot.

Note the correct dual-beam lighting.

Note the buffer above the coupler was supposed to be black, but factory didn't do it.

Note the MU box on the right side of the nose.  Southern had round ones on both sides.  I think it would have been better to do that detail using decals, so every road could get what was custom to them.

So there's enough photos to digest.  Here is what I plan on doing to these:

1. Paint buffer black
2. Paint Pilot grab irons Im Aluminum
3. Paint cab interiors light gray.
4. Replace horn with prototypical Cal Scale Nathan M5 horn.
5. Add Firecracker Antenna
6. Add ACI plates
7. Add MU/air hoses to front pilot. 
8. Add any speed recorders to trucks per unit per prototype.
9. Add my own custom photo-etched cab shades over the cab windows.
10. Add my own custom photo-etched spark arrestors.
11. Get rid of the fuel tank skirting and add correct fuel tank equipment.
12. Add the correct SOU-style water tanks on either side of the fuel tanks.
13. Replace numberboards. Numberboard font is too thin (looked good in artwork, but came out wrong); replace with microscale decals. Also numbers should be on outsides of numberboards, not centered.
14. Replace Kadee 805's with newer Kadees as I do with all of my locomotives.
15. Units are too dull, Spray them with gloss or semigloss  

If I decide that the number spacing bothers me too much (causing me to to remove the numbering)...additional items:

1. Add the cab vent on engineer side 
2. Look at changing out sand hatches to Southern-Style sand hatches.
3. Look at improving the rooftop tank mounts by grinding off unprototypical parts.
4. Look at adding any rear lighting if these units had it.
5. Maybe flag brackets for every unit.
6. Repaint as Black tuxedo
7. Possibly renumber some to the 2900 series

Anyone know someone who makes the correct mirrors (scale-sized) in O-scale to add by the windows?

Modeling: April Project Month - Parts4-6: Misc SOU/SCL Diesel Jobs

I forgot to get photos of these 3 projects before I left:

• SCL FT units (no photos)
• SOU F3 paint touch-ups (no photos)
• SOU SD9 (Of course MTH announces one as I finished this one...no photos)

My dad had bought an ABA set of ACL FT units.  Despite never having had them, he wanted them SCL.  I went ahead and used F3/F7 units as my guides.  I first removed all window material/port lenses for proper decal prep.  I carefully sanded off the ACL lettering and repainted the area with black paint.  After the glosscote, it is hard to tell that the area was ever touched.  I then added the SCL lettering, the SCL logo under the cab windows, and the SCL herald on the nose.  The only bad part is that the herald yellow does not match the yellow MTH chose.  Bummer.  Maybe a 5-6 hour due to the careful sanding of the ACL lettering, to ensure nothing else was removed.




My dad had some MTH F3 units that had some paint scratches on the edges of the green on the units.  The tru-color green is a good match.  A quick little hour job spread over two or three passes.  I would suggest getting the flat-paintable version, as it did go on a little glossier than the existing paint, but luckily it was just small paint nicks and passable.




The SOU SD9 was a complete repaint from a pretty old Protosound2 C&O unit.  No super-detailing at all.  These units are too crude to warrant any more than a repaint job from me IMHO.  The paint on these was on good.  I wish I had a sandblaster for this particular one, but oh well.  Lots of time in the 91% isopropyl and a toothbrush got the job done.  The experiment of gloss black was tried on this guy too, but won't do that again.  I looked at pictures and decided to use unit 204W as my guide. (Which is good in case my dad wants to get the newly catalogued 202 unit.) 

Hardest part on this one is the imitation aluminum striping.  I noticed the new microscale decal sets do not use the striping, but rather just giving you the gold stripes and force you to paint the imitation aluminum stripes.  Probably a good idea, and will pick up tru-color for that.  Laying the stripes is a real PITA because there are louvers and door handles that make it hard to lay the decals, requiring lots of layers of microsol, and poking with an X-acto knife.  Where the decal didn't lay right, I had some paint that I was able to use to fix any problems in the stripe.  Final product came out well. I don't know the hour estimate, but it was a lot due to the paint stripping and the stripe application. Probably 10 hours.

Modeling: April Project Month - Part3: SCL SD45 2004

As already discussed in my blog, I had done up units 2000 and 2010 for my dad previously.  I located and got my dad unit 2004 as a surprise.  I was able to match the weathering exactly, despite not writing down what I used.  I also fixed the numberboards and made sure to paint the LEDs with tamiya translucent orange to get rid of the bright-white LEDs that are not prototypical for the 1970s.

Some photos of the weathering job, where the shells are pan pasteled lightly, and the underframe area has typical roadgrime as shown in pictures.  I left the snowplow off this one, but SCL did run these with snowplows in winter time.

This time around, I also noticed that MTH totally botched the font of SCL on the side of the units.  Oh well.  Not fixing that one.

Modeling: April Project Month - Part2: SCL Passenger Cars

This project, while listed as Part 2, took up the bulk of my time, probably some 40+ hours when it was all said and done.  It was supposed to be a simple repainting of the lettering boards, but then there were ACI plates and SCL heralds that had to be put directly on the car bodies, so it required full-on taking everything apart to do the proper prep work to put on the Microscale decals. Things worth doing are worth doing right.  No shortcuts.

Then while apart, I figured if I was going to do them right, I might as well do the interiors.  The colors are inspired off a handful of photos from the Morning Sun ACL Color Guide.  These cars are "ex-ACL" after all.  The interior photos of SCL cars that exist that I am aware of did not show these cars anyways.  The "ex-ACL" is in quotes, since these cars are generic car bodies that MTH slathers on any old paint scheme and do not faithfully represent the prototype cars that really existed. With that being said, I probably put upwards of 10 hours in carefully trimming off the skirts with first a dremel, and then X-acto knives. It's a spotting feature, so had to be done.

These cars were made in 2015 and I must say that MTH quality has gone far up since the first set of cars I went inside some 10 or so years ago.  The people were glued in extremely well, as were the window strips.  The tooling enhancements are noticeable on the construction of the cars on the inside too. Each car had a different set of figures that MTH makes.  Smart move.

I labeled every car and interior with painters tape.  I took photos of each car before taking out the figures, to know exactly how to put them back in each car. One will even see that I managed to put keil-line dishes on 10 of the tables in the dining car.  MTH interiors are not to scale.  The dishes take up too much space on the table, but are good enough for the effect from looking outside.

I used .02" white styrene cut down to model the window shades pulled at different heights.  I knew where the figures sat, so I made sure the shades were up to see the figures. I used rubber cement to hold them in place.This ensures the window-strip material doesn't craze.  I can't speak for the longevity of how well they will hold the shades over the next decades.

The OBS got some special treatment.  I noticed in pictures that the OBS rear windows had blinds.  I printed out extremely thin vertical green strips (using MS Paint) on paper, cut them out, glued the halves together with white glue (to model both sides), and glued those in with rubber cement. I created a custom decal for the drumhead.  I also took off the 3R coupler on the rear truck, and used the existing kadee-pad to add a Kadee clone made by Weaver to the end of the OBS.

I think the only thing left I could have really done, was upgrade the lighting to flicker-free LEDs, but that's enough work for now.

Here's the Photo Essay...first up, the complete train:

Baggage: SCL 5002

Coach: SCL 5267

Coach: SCL 5464

Coach: SCL 5480

Sleeper: SCL Venice

Diner: SCL 5951

OBS: SCL 5844

 Some Work to get to the finished product:

 I airbrushed the seats first.

 Masked off the painted seats to then do most of the floor by airbrush.  Then follow up with brush.

Letterboards on their own paint board.

 This is what it looks like to take apart a whole set of cars, windows and everything in order.  Made it easier to put them back where they came from.

 I forgot the height, but I cut a bunch of strips from one sheet of .02" styrene.

 Easy to bend and rip apart.  Then file down the edges. Cut for different heights b/t windows.

 OBS blinds making in process.  Do not add glue directly to paper, drag strip across a pond of glue.

 Completed Interiors.

 Keil Line Dishes Painted.

 The ruler might be for exageration, since the fluting made it easy to line up the lettering boards.

 Some cut-off skirting done by X-acto knife only.

Roster Shots:

Some other various shots:

Dining Car:

The Observation Car:
 

Modeling: April Project Month - Part1: SCL RS3 1161

Over the month of April, I scrapped together as much time as I could to finish out several 3R O gauge projects for my dad. I had some of his stuff in my house for 2-3 years and hadn't had a chance to work on it.  I put everything aside to get these out of my basement.

This is the first of several posts.  He runs 3R O gauge trains, in SCL, SOU, NYC, and various other roads. I finished out several things...ironically they were all made by MTH.
1. SCL RS3
2. SCL Passenger Cars
3. SCL SD45 Modifications/Weathering
4. SCL FT units (no photos)
5. SOU F3 paint touch-ups (no photos)
6. SOU SD9 (Of course MTH announces one as I finished this one...no photos)
7. SCL RPO - Still in progress.

The model itself is an MTH Protosound2 RS3 and was painted UP.

This SCL RS3 is a pure repaint and weathering job, nothing more. There was no effort on this one to do any sort of super-detailing (minus the addition of number boards on the ends), etc. However, this one closely resembles the prototype, including the horns.

I used this to try a few things. One being the use of Testor's rattle cans to lay on the semi-gloss black paint.  I won't ever do it again.  The paint goes on too thick, so I will forevermore use only airbrushes on anything that touches the rails.  Buildings are another story. I also learned that the gloss spray paint wasn't worth it, and that I needed to gloss-cote anyways, so flat black is fine as a base coat. I also learned that Testors gloss lacquer can easily come off Testors gloss enamel.  They are not compatible.  Don't do it.

Weathering is by airbrush, drybrush, and pan pastels.  This is a very basic job...maybe 30 minutes worth, trying to match photos I had.

The interior is a photo my dad uses for these types of engines.  Also an MTH engineer figure was heavily mutilated to fit into the cab. It was so time-consuming, the fireman side only has the photo glued to the motor-shield.

I have been working on a temporary photobooth of sorts on my new workbench...however I really need to work on my lighting as you will see.  I have a diorama planned to replace this...but that will take time.

As a side note, good luck finding SCL locomotive decals.  I think I dried up the last pond.

Enjoy.