Picked this old one up on eBay for $25 from a nice seller in PA. Normally I don't buy AHM or other old unreliable items like this, but I was intrigued because I had never heard of it. Only 26 of the real loco were ever made. This is the High Cab version of the original. Three cab heights were made. I'm thinking this model might have been made near the time of the prototype....mid '60s. Any ideas?
I've read the wikipedia article about this being developed as a single-operator switcher in 1966, but what I would like to know is how this model, #231 made it into the Santa Fe roster....if it actually did. The online info and all diesel rosters I checked show no Santa Fe C-415, and no purchashing and renumbering of another line's loco. I think perhaps AHM made a mistake?
In any case I wanted to run it on DCC so went about a conversion. This was a treat! Everything necessary was on hand and the loco was easily adapted.....which is not always the case.
This conversion is not noteworthy other than that the loco is old. If you want to take a look, see the photos below.
The old open frame motor is mounted vertically. Because the driving wheels under the motor were fitted with rubber traction tires and I wanted to replace the wheels, I took the opportunity to add wipers to this truck to give 4-axle pickup. Original wipers on rear idler truck are visible.
Just adapted some tender axle wipers by cutting one half off.
Original wheels were deeply-flanged and don't run on my ballasted Code 83 track. Luckily, some Kato replacements on hand matched nicely. For gears I cut down the hub of the Kato drive gear which has one less tooth, but nearly identical diameter. Dabbed on some Loctite to hold the axle halves in the shortened hub. The Loctite also isolated the two wheels from one another enabling them to use that wiper pickup.
Wasn't sure how the old loco would react to track power so I just used a left-over Lenz 4-function decoder taken out of some old Bachmann...in case it fried. fit nicely in here.
Headlights needed. Cut away some of the nose weight and set an LED in with some epoxy.
Grills on the old AHM were cut through the shell, so need some black tape to block stray light.
Rear light was set in epoxy in the roof of the rear shell.
First placement of couplers fit easily into space left by truck-mounted horn hook coupler....but it didn't work. The coupler was far too low....even for an underset coupler to be of any use.
So, snipped off the old coupler mount from the truck and built up the space under catwalk for a frame- mounted set.. More work, but came out at exactly the right height.
Now, the little beast sounds like ten can openers running all at once, but it responds well and is very smooth over the track. Had a lot of fun with it so far. Wouild just like to know how it ended up on the Santa Fe roster.
Very nice job on the conversion to DCC and new wheelsets.
I wasn't able to find anything on the prototype of this loco, however I did find an ATSF roster:
http://spazioinwind.libero.it/cajon/roster/sfdiesel.htm
This roster shows that the #231 was worn by 5 different Santa Fe diesel locomotives. First there where two F3 A/B pairs that wore the number (all 4 had the number 231 with the letter designations L, C, A, and B). Later on there was (maybe still is?) an SD75M that was numbered 231, link to picture:
http://www.railpictures.net/viewphoto.php?id=209351&nseq=0
I would say that it looks like Santa Fe never actually rostered C-415's. This isn't very surprising, Santa Fe is a pretty popular road name, so it would make sense for AHM to make a Santa Fe version of this loco even if there wasn't a prototype.
it still is a nice little loco though, even without a prototype,
Jamie
Cape Vincent Southern Railroad
HO scale Horseshoe Curve in 5’x10’
My YouTube
AHM never sold that one, they were first imported by ATT, the Life-Like offered them, and Model Power. IHC also had them, more recently. They were all made for the various distributors by Mehano in Yugoslavia.
SF never had any, of the 26 ever made, 10 went to Rock Island and 10 to SP. 2 went to SP&S, the rest one each to various industrial concerns. A great big failure, for the most part. ANd hard to model - not only were there 3 different cab heights, they could be had with either AAR Type B trucks or ALco Hi-Ad trucks. Both the SP and RI has AAR trucks, but the RI has the medium height cab and the SAP had the tall cab. I found a thread on the Atlas forums talking about an Overland brass version, ostensibly so the details would be correct for each road name, but they didn;t sell very well (at nearly $800 I see why).
--Randy
Modeling the Reading Railroad in the 1950's
Visit my web site at www.readingeastpenn.com for construction updates, DCC Info, and more.
rrinker AHM never sold that one, they were first imported by ATT, the Life-Like offered them, and Model Power. IHC also had them, more recently. They were all made for the various distributors by Mehano in Yugoslavia --Randy
AHM never sold that one, they were first imported by ATT, the Life-Like offered them, and Model Power. IHC also had them, more recently. They were all made for the various distributors by Mehano in Yugoslavia
I see. Thanks. The seller was never sure about the maker. Yes, I found that all 26 were sold with none going to SF, the original prototype going down to Australia. I thought this 213 might have been a resold renumbered one.
From what I understand Santa Fe never had any C-liners in silver warbonnet colors but that didn't stop AHM from making them. I have one that I picked up for $2 at a train show. It runs great and I use it for track testing.
RMax
Magnet for loco's that never existed!
Even worse are the C-Liners in Reading green and yellow scheme.
It seems that every manufacturer makes Santa Fe versions of their locomotives even though the real Santa Fe never had 90 percent of them, just because it's a very popular road name.
I bought one of those recently at a train show that is decorated for the Southern Pacific. A decoder has been installed and it runs acceptably despite the lack of a flywheel. I did not change the wheels because it was new, still in the original box, and had hardly been ran at all.
In the 30's people wrote in to MR complainign that the only available locos were all PRR. It did seem that every layout they profiles had a K4 on it, regardless of scale or location.
As luck would have it, I have just resurrected my HO trains from when I was a child and this was my first set. I'm just starting out and will be constructing a permanent display, but my first order of business was to do maintenance on the 7 engines that I own and that haven't been run for 23 years.
Regarding this one, I'm not as experienced yet with all that you did (very impressed) and I simply put #47 size O rings (purchased at Lowes) to replace the rubber rings which were shot and after some cleaning and some light oil, it runs perfect. Well, almost perfect.....sounds just like yours!!
As far as when these were made, I received this as my first train set when I was 4 in 1968. I hope this helps!