F59PHI
Background
History
From a friend of mine, I found out that he was a hogger on this unit. Brand-new, on Caltrans' system only a few weeks, and he slammed the door and broke it. Sigh...wonderful guy, but apparently didn't know his own strength. Of course, from the sounds of things, they're not built that well to begin with...the doors, anyways! My buddy is now an engineer for Amtrak, and he is still breaking things regularly...seems he doesn't much like the P40/P42's on the Empire Builder all that much. Can't imagine why, other than the fact that he is a die-hard EMD fan. He does some beautiful work on Milwaukee SD40-2's and Amtrak F40PH units.
Plans
Not a whole lot of work has been done on this unit right now. Mainly, I want to pick up the matching cars from TrainStationProducts (TSP) and they are kits, so that'll be some work. I plan on also lighting the red reverse lamps on the nose with LED's. and getting the ditch lights on their own outputs, so they can flash.
A bigger project will be to pick up a Loksound decoder and install it, and the biggest speaker I can find for it. Might go with the Digitrax SoundBug to get some more options with the QSI High Bass line too. What I want to do is get the correct prime mover sound in it (710G 12 cyl) and then overwrite the sound for something else, (dynamics, or something) with my own recording of a Caterpillar diesel running full tilt. These units have a separate 800 HP Caterpillar diesel for head end power (HEP) and it runs full tilt all the time, unlike the main engine. I figure if I can get both engine sounds coming out of the unit, that would just be too cool! All I need to do is find a construction site and wait till something with Caterpillar on the side of it fires up, winds up, and get a recording.
Some paint work is also in the future, as the unit is painted more or less correctly, but things like step edges, grabs, etc are needing some different coloring.
I've been working on the unit off an on, trying to put LED's into it. I've succeeded a few times, but I keep burning one of them out. Not sure how yet, but I know that's what's happening with one of the ditch lights.
Both of the red beacons are in, and if I can ever get the ditch lights done right and working, we'll be able to call this one finished! It just hasn't happened yet.
