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S.P Tunnel motor and S.P SD45 experts please!!

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S.P Tunnel motor and S.P SD45 experts please!!
Posted by Gary UK on Thursday, July 12, 2007 5:20 PM

Ive just bought 2 Athearn SD45-2T's, one with early SP lettering the other with late speed lettering. The one with the speed letters, #9395 does not have the one L shaped cab window on the engineers side. Is this correct? Im guessing not.

The only picture i can find of this unit, i cant see the cab properly, so its difficult to tell.

Second question on Proto 2000 SD45, again SP #8953, the trucks and frame are black, shouldnt they be gray??

Thanks for any help guys.

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Posted by YoHo1975 on Thursday, July 12, 2007 6:09 PM

The L-Window was a feature from the early 80s (late 70's?)

SP replaced most of these Windows with normal ones by the 90s. The Speed lettering is also from the early 90s, therefore you would be very unlikely to find a speedlettered tunnel motor with the L-window. 

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Posted by Gary UK on Friday, July 13, 2007 2:21 AM
 YoHo1975 wrote:

The L-Window was a feature from the early 80s (late 70's?)

SP replaced most of these Windows with normal ones by the 90s. The Speed lettering is also from the early 90s, therefore you would be very unlikely to find a speedlettered tunnel motor with the L-window. 

Thats good news, so the model is correct then! Thanks for the info.

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Posted by Steve_F on Friday, July 13, 2007 3:49 AM

My educated guess is you will have to paint the side frames if you wish them to look real, I have a proto 2000 SD9 C&NW that came with GREEN trucks and a couple of UP Proto 2000 GP7s that came with grey trucks, although the grey looked ok I still painted them silver and lightly weathered them, needless to say the green ones got a dose of weathered black and heavy weathering.

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Posted by SSW9389 on Friday, July 13, 2007 7:54 AM

Almost got it here. All SD45T-2s were built with the L-window. These windows were modified  during the time when safety glass was installed starting in the early 1980s. When the modification was done the L-window was replaced with the extended-vision window arrangement from EMD. The engineer's side window is divided by a narrow strip. I don't know if this was done with standard EMD windows, but will have to check on that too. The dividing post is narrower than the standard EMD post. Your model should have a narrow post on the engineers side and a much wider one on the opposite side of the cab. Also the large window on the engineer's side should be wider than the opposite side window. See Brian Rutherford's excellent SD45T-2 article in Diesel Era Volume 2 Number 3 if you can find it.

Ed Captain [4:-)]

 YoHo1975 wrote:

The L-Window was a feature from the early 80s (late 70's?)

SP replaced most of these Windows with normal ones by the 90s. The Speed lettering is also from the early 90s, therefore you would be very unlikely to find a speedlettered tunnel motor with the L-window. 

COTTON BELT: Runs like a Blue Streak!
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Posted by Gary UK on Friday, July 13, 2007 2:08 PM

Thanks for the reply.

One other thing, whats the differance between an SD45 R and an SD45? 

Only thing i can see is the trucks are differant on the SD45R.

Ive also just noticed that the SD45 is shorter than a 45 tunnel motor, my heads spinning!

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Posted by SSW9389 on Friday, July 13, 2007 3:22 PM

Gary UK: The SD45R is the rebuilt version of the SD45. A total of 167 of the 356 SD45s on the SP System were rebuilt. The first unit was done in 1979 and then the program started up for real in 1981. One of the major changes was the removal of the L-windows from the SD45 as this rebuild program coincided with the Safety Glass program. Same thin post thick post on the windshield as I explained with the Tunnel Motor conversions. Also note that the light packages are different especially at the rear of the carbody. Suggest you check out some photos of the units at http://espee.railfan.net/espee.html or http://www.rr-fallenflags.org/ Both websites will have photos of as-built and rebuilt units.

Ed 

 

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Posted by Gary UK on Friday, July 13, 2007 3:43 PM

Thanks Ed, thats cleared up all i wanted to know. Il have a look at those links to!

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Posted by ericsp on Sunday, July 15, 2007 12:14 AM
The trucks and fuel tanks on SP's locomotives in the gray and red schemes are gray.

"No soup for you!" - Yev Kassem (from Seinfeld)

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Posted by Gary UK on Sunday, July 15, 2007 1:05 PM

 ericsp wrote:
The trucks and fuel tanks on SP's locomotives in the gray and red schemes are gray.

Yeah, i was 99.9% certain that was the case and P2K couldnt be bothered to paint them!

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