Ah...Altoona! My engine house will look like three bays of that monster.
Since I'm between projects I'm not working on the RR much (building that model Ford GTA), but I did one little thing.
I added some missing railings to my only Rail king engine, a UP EMD switcher. It has nice rails attached to the chassis, but all the body mounted railings are just molded-on bumps. I added the missing ones leading to the cab door. There are bumps there supposedly representing railings which I left in place. Scraping them off would have required repainting. I had UP gray, but was afraid of the match and didn't want to repaint this engine and the calf that accompanies it.
The model's rails measured 0.045". The wire I used was 0.050". A little thick, but the next size would have been 0.032" and that would have been too thin. I went with the larger size. I had a fleeting thought about scraping off the molded on railing flanking the engine compartment, but dispelled that for the same repainting challenge.
This engine DOES NOT have a constant voltage headlamp, and has no lighting in the cab. I have a schematic for putting a constant voltage LED in the engine and am considering doing that. This headlamp looks like it a candle unless the voltage is cranked up. I guess that's the tradeoff when buying MTH's economy line, versus Premier. I guess I'm a Premier snob being that all my other MTH engines are of this class. At least it has good sound.
Here's the schematic for an LED light mod (thanks to Don Grabski). The first is directional, and the second non-directional. I'm going to try and do this... Wish me luck.
