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Wednesday, May 22, 2013

Central Vermont RS-3 - 1

With the Sea Trial behind me it's time to turn my attention to some actual modeling projects. First up is something I'd been wanting to model for a long time, a Central Vermont Phase III RS-3. In fact, I plan to build two of them. 
I'm using an Atlas RS-3 drive. For the unique Phase III shells I'm using a Stewart Hobbies undecorated shell. 
As you can see from the photo above the Stewart shell is not a "drop in" replacement for the Atlas one. You have to remove some plastic from the shell, and some metal from the Atlas frame to get the Stewart Hobbies shell to fit. I also wanted sound installed in both of these. 
I contracted the milling of the metal frames and the decoder installation out to Mike Rose (of Scotty Mason Show podcast fame). I have those back in hand now, and they run, and sound, great. 
Next time to is to complete modifications to the plastic shell and then detail and paint them both. 
Weathering will be extremely light on both of these engines since my October 1954 era means both of them are less than two weeks old.
Should be fun. 


2 comments:

  1. Hi Marty,
    What are you going to use for the winterization hatch? Would it be a scratch build or maybe a Miniatures by Eric part? I plan on building both CV RS3's for our modular layout. Thanks

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  2. Thomas, I'm using Miniatures by Eric winterization hatches on the RS-3s I'm building. You might want to hold off on this project though since Bowser will be releasing a series of "state of the art" RS-3s within the next year or so - including a newly tooled Phase III model.

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