Broadway Limited (PCM) N Scale PA Shell Removal

[atasar]

Thanks very much tbdanny!

[tbdanny]

Hi,

I had to remove the shell on my Paragon-2 equipped one due to a faulty reset button - the castings and chassis should be the same.

The first thing to do is to remove the front coupler - this will make things much easier when pulling it out of the chassis.  You will need two toothpicks and a jeweller's screwdriver, flat-nosed.  Put the toothpicks between the shell and the frame about halfway down, on either side of the fuel tank.  Put the jeweller's screwdriver between the shell and the frame at the back of the loco - it should be between the diaphragm and the rear truck.  Prise upward gently.  Repeat until the rear-top of the chassis comes free.  Then, just lift it out.

Putting it back in is a bit tricky, due to the way the separately-applied handrails are mounted - the wire is just bent over inside the shell.  You'll need to make sure that all the bent ends are pointing towards the roof before putting the shell back on - I didn't and had to redo it, as the chassis pushed an incorrectly-oriented wire out of its hole.

Hope this helps,

tbdanny

[atasar]

Can anyone out there advise me on how to remove the shells on the BLI (PCM) Paragon2 N scale PA units - the ones that are DCC Ready but have no sound installed. They were just released about 1 or 2 months ago. I tried spreading the lower edge of the shell and shaking the loco to see if the chassis would slip out but no luck. Has anyone actually done this and can tell me how they did it? Thanks in advance for your help!