I know it's a Railking engine. For under $300 this has to be one of the best bargains out there. I'm really a B&A steam guy. I have a soft spot for late 40's early 50's NH diesels. Especially the warm orange paint schemes. This engine is a fantastic runner. Suprisingly it has a lot of added on details. The stock MTH couplers would not stay coupled to my Kadee equipped rolling stock. After some experimenting before cutting anything up. I was sure it would work. I needed about a 1/8 spacer. I picked up a piece of aluminum at Home Depot that was 1/8 x 1 1/2 by 3ft. . Plenty of material to allow for trial and error. Plastic probably would work just as well. I tend to overbuild things. With the shell off. There are 2 3mm screws that secure the headlight brackets to the die cast chassis. I used these 2 holes to secure the spacer plate. The bracket is handy to space the holes for the spacer using a center punch. The plate requires 4 critical holes. 2 to mount the spacer and 2 to secure the coupler, shim, and steps. These must be drilled square and spaced properly for it to look good. This is why I bought 3 feet of stock. A drill press comes in handy. If you mark it and start to drill and it looks to be off by eye. Stop and flip the piece over and try again. There's nothing more frustrating than to drill a bunch of holes perfect and then mess up the last one. I have another RS1 to do. Was almost thinking of bringing a master working piece to a machine shop. For nothing else than to make sure the holes are in line. You will need to tap 2/56 holes to mount the coupler and steps. I bought some mounts from Mario. I ended up going with the one for a Lionel RS 11. The Atlas RS1 looked nice but spaced the coupler to low.
The 2 larger holes are to access the body mount screws.
Use Mario's mount as a guide. 2 nubs have to be filed flush. As well as the rounded portion near the couplers head. It fits perfectly inside the pilot to get the holes drilled evenly.After the holes are drilled you can trim the pilot. There's no turning back now. You can shorten the Kadee's box for clearance to miss the factory coupler mount. I opted to just trim the mount off the truck seeing I had already cut up the pilot. I did add a small piece of 1/8 x 1/8 brass stock with a no. 60 hole drilled through it and glued it to the shim. I added an air hose off an MTH freight truck. Everything bolts up with 2/56 1/2" screws. Just using these pieces you should be right on the money height wise.
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You can now secure this in place and make some final measurements and trim to fit with a file. It will look something like this when done. Use long 3mm screws to secure the mount. When done. You can drop the headlight bracket over the extended threads. Just enough room to secure it on with one nut using an open end wrench
I painted everything up and weathered it. This one was a little different. In my steam era. I model the mid 40's during the war. Everything is heavily weathered. This engine in the year I'm modeling is only a few years old. I had to learn to go on the lighter side. One thing I never noticed was the placement of the bell. Didn't even know it was there till I dissassembled it. I decided to paint it brass to make it stand out a little more.
