New Life for an Iron Horse

 

Central Vermont 2-8-0 no. 472 is back in service after seven years sitting in a box! 

I mentioned one of my goals for this weekend was to get CV no. 472 back into service. 

This is an extensively detailed Bachmann Spectrum 2-8-0. It's actually a very, very early example of the model since it was the Model Railroader review sample. After Andy Sperandeo finished reviewing it he gave it to me 

This is how the locomotive looked immediately after being pulled out of storage. 

Iain Rice happened to be visiting Wisconsin at the time and I showed him the model and the drawings of the CV locomotive. We looked it over and noted the wheelbase and overall dimensions were pretty close to a CV N-5-a class engine. Iain mentioned it shouldn't be too difficult to get pretty close to a CV 2-8-0 starting with the Bachmann model. Not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, I sent him back to England with the locomotive and a shoebox full of Cal-Scale, Kemptron and Bowser detail parts. 

I think the project was a little more involved than Iain bargained for - the photos here of the unpainted model show just how many details he added, moved, and removed, but it is remarkable how close it looks like a CV 2-8-0. 

Views of the front and rear half of the locomotive show just how much rework and redetailing Iain Rice did to get this engine to capture the look of the CV prototypes. 

During the several months Iain was working on the engine another exciting new product arrived - a Soundtraxx DCC steam sound decoder. After the locomotive arrived back in the U. S., I installed the Soundtraxx decoder before painting, decaling and weathering the locomotive. 

The original Soundtraxx decoder 

Number 472 was in regular service on both the first and second versions of my Southern New England. In 2015 I was getting ready for an op session when I noticed 472 was just not sounding or working right. I even mentioned it in this blog post. 

She was "stored, awaiting disposition" for the next few years while other projects took priority. 

A few weeks ago I dug the engine out the box and put it on the track. Not surprising the poor performance hadn't gone away with age. But I decided to swap out the old decoder and speaker. The nine-pin connectors made the actual decoder swap a simple matter. Swapping out the speaker was a little trickier, mostly because of the custom made baffle that I ended up having to remove to fit the new speaker in place.

I also took the time to dust the locomotive and tender off, and to clean the wheels and the copper pickup tabs on the engine and tender.  

I'm pleased to report that 472 is back in service, looking and sounding better than ever!