I'm surprised the fan melted a little, I guess this particular engine just needs to really be filled with fluid.
Me too - surprised that is. Not good and I'm surprised this happened - presumably when the smoke unit resistors were heated and the fan was not spinning, which I assume can only mean that this is the whistle smoke fan that melted and it happened when the fan was stationary. May militate in favor of saturating the wadding before running this engine, which it seems can only be done by taking off the boiler shell. I'll decide whether to do that when my DAYLIGHT version arrives.
Overall the disassembly and innards look very similar to the original 2005, except of course for the dual-smoke unit.
That's true. The wiring in my 2005 RS5 version is similar and relatively simple or neat compared with other Lionel steamers. It still does not match the user-friendly wiring of MTH diesels where the body shell detaches completely and the lighting is all wired through a set of contacts that make it easy to service the innards without any real risk of pinching wires when the unit is re-assembled.
P.S. the 2005 AC-12 has a similar arrangement for the marker lights, and possibly others mounted on the cab, which is just visible in Alex's first photo above.
