Hi Chris,

Glad you liked the build so far, but I'm not done with this yet. I needed to step away from the build because I wasn't satisfied with the results I was seeing with the 1st build. In that time, I made some changes that were never posted and improved some details. So I'll be bringing this thread back to life real soon.

With my hiatus over with this project, I’ll be inching this along again. There were things I didn’t like with #1 (2709) after I primed the body. To many mistakes for my liking and some detail work I wasn’t happy with. The hiatus gave me time to think about my approach to this build and what I can do better. Currently, I’m fixing what I don’t like about #1(2709) and the body work on #2 was completed a while back which turned out so much better. So I have to fix the mistakes on #1. But to the defense of #1, it was the sole guinea pig for the build. The fix for #1 isn’t a major time consuming effort but still time consuming and will be well worth the effort when done.

As for this article, I’m bringing it up to speed from what was already done while fixing poor 2709 and working on a few other projects for the fall modelers meet. I hope to have the 1200m’s primed or just painted for the show, but no matter what, they’ll make an appearance there again.

After doing all the major surgery to the body and removing the radiator grille work, it was necessary to come up with a mounting system for the body and frame. As it is, one set of body tabs on the back end isn’t going to cut it for securing those bodies to the frames. How I approached this was to make a pair of styrene mounting tabs .040ths thick and approximately .670 in length x .380 in width. The length allows me to gently squeeze the hood in the middle of the tabs for an easier release and it worked pretty well. I also went a little thinner on #2 and used .030ths thick which also worked just as good.

Next I placed the hood on the frame and marked the hood in reference to the tab slot on the frame. The new tab will be cemented in between those marks. I used liquid cement to bond the tabs to the body. I did double check the alignment of the tabs before they set for good by placing the body on the frame and making sure the new tabs lined up with the frame slots. Below are the numbers I ended up with for the mounting tabs.




I gave the tabs ample time to dry thoroughly so the solvent evaporates completely. Next I roughed in the mounting slots by drilling a few holes first. Then I used a sharp #11 and a needle file to open up the slots. I assembled the body to the walkway and test fit the body to the frame. I made my adjustments to the slot openings so the tabs slide over the frame pins and lock in. I also touched up the frame mounting pins slightly with a file to aid in the fitting. This took a little back and forth work until I had a tight fit just like the stock mounting tabs to keep the body secure. This was an important step to get this all done before continuing with the build.

Going over my notes from way back, I forget to mention that when I made the body tabs, I had to open and widen the slots on the walkway so the tabs could slide through and lock onto the frame. And while I’m on the walkway subject for now, when EMD rebuilt the Baldwins and replaced the front of the hood with the SW body, this left a gap between the walkway and hood which was filled in with steel plate. I made a .020 thick styrene plug for the front of the walkway that measures .262 x .822 wide. I shaped the plug to fit the inside contour of the walkway. I cemented the plug on the ledge that was used for the Baldwin hood to reside in. The EMD style hood being wider will rest on top of the walkway. With the plug being a smooth surface with no tread plate to match, I sanded smooth the top of the walkway removing the cast tread plate. New tread plate will be added later.

Moving forward with this build again, I turned my attention to those two big holes in the hood. I’m adding a Details Associates #2727 radiator screen that will give a nice see through effect on top of the hood and DA #2709 for the fan grille. And since the radiator screen is giving me the visibility, I wanted to add a pair of radiators to look like the prototype as much as possible.





The radiator detail went through several experimental stages since I started these models. What I thought I was going to settle for was easy to make. It involved Evergreen #4525 .030 x .040 thick metal siding cut to the dimensions 1.130 X .890. I then cut a center beam out Evergreen .080 I beam. The 4 dividers were made of styrene .020 x .030 and evenly spaced. The styrene end caps were cut to fit the inner dimension .030 x .080. When it was all dry in place, I shaved the tops of the end caps to the match the angle of the hood and sanded them smooth.





But I wasn’t all that happy with that design, I just wanted a little more out those radiator grids.

I stumbled onto a solution that works better visually for me. I made new radiator grids from junk Atlas U30c phase 2 shells which were cannibalized for another project. These were almost a drop in for the M’s. I cut the grilles off the shells and sanded all sides smooth. The pic shows the progression with final cuts.



The shells can be purchased off the Atlas web site for about $7.00 each if they are still in stock. Making the radiators this way was a little different than the original plan. First change, Instead of being flat, I wanted to angle the radiators just like the prototype. Second change was they would be made to fit each individual opening because there was a variation in length by several thousand from one shell to the other. This was not a big deal because the end caps can make up the difference in length, and the screen frame of the DA part would hide the variation in length. But most importantly, they had to be a good fit for each shell.