Here's a locomotive that to my knowledge has never before been made in O Scale: the Westinghouse Manufacturing Company's early "Visibility Cab" diesel. WEMCO provided parts for many of the early (1920s-1930s) diesel locomotives, and at times they sold them directly-- here is a webpage documenting some of their products. Although their 70-ton "Visibility Cab" engines were fairly standardized, the larger engines were made with several styles of body provided by different car builders. The particular model that I chose to depict is a Baldwin-bodied 110-ton locomotive prototype. Here is an image of the exact engine.
I started off with the donor engine: a brand new Lionchief 44-tonner. I liked the locomotive's sounds and track performance, but was underwhelmed with the simple body. I was impressed with the compactness of the Lionchief electronics though.
Dismantling the donor engine required removing 6 screws from the underside. The interior and headlight harness was tacked in with a tiny screw and a few dabs of hot glue, which I was able to pop free with a screwdriver.
Using my usual technique, I made a 3D CAD model of the Lionchief donor chassis and then designed a new body around it. I divided the body up into 3 parts that tab together for ease of printing. I considering designing new bumpers and truck sideframes, but the original Lionel parts seemed reasonably close to the prototype.
After a couple of days of running my printers, I had the whole body made up in sturdy ABS plastic. I had some Lehigh and New England decals left over from another project, so I decided to go with their white-on-black livery. Although I don't think the LNE ever owned a WEMCO locomotive, they interchanged with the small local line Northampton and Bath, which did have a couple of these exotic engines in their roster. Here is a nice article on the N&B, including a photo of one of their WEMCO engines (apparently with some interesting modifications to the body).
Here's a view comparing the original Lionel shell to my custom 3D printed one. There are 3 screws holding each hood end to the frame, each hood overlaps the center cab section so it is held tightly in place.
I installed handrails, clear-coated the whole assembly and finally assembled the WEMCO. I was very pleased to find that the original Lionchief lighting harness (which does have directional lighting) fit the new body without any modification. Sounds, lights AND Bluetooth control with no soldering required!
Here's a view of the other end. The locomotive is symmetrical on the outside, although the screw bosses are slightly different on one side to make clearances. I made the radiator grate mesh on the hood ends out of scrap material from a misprint.
Check it out running on my layout!
