New steam power for the Blackwing and Western

The Great Northern Historical Society had an auction recently and I put bids on two Sunset Models brass GN O-8 class locomotives. I won both of them for a very reasonable price!

They have some discoloration from the red foam they were packed in (not uncommon) and are not painted, but I’ll be stripping them and painting them.

The two models are essentially the same – the only real differences are the cabs – one is the open style and one is the closed style (warmer in the winter).

I took one apart to see how they were built and they look pretty good. They have some sort of can motor in them – we’ll see how well they run, and the rubber tube coupling from the motor to the worm drive is all hardened from age, but that’s easy to replace.

I’m sure they will need some tuning and tweaking. They will get SoundTraxx Tsunami DCC decoders with sound installed. I’m not sure where I’ll put the decoder and speaker yet, but there’s lots of room in both the boiler and in the tender.

I’m thinking I’ll paint one in the green “Glacier Park” scheme even though it pre-dates my era a little bit. The second one will just be the standard black with graphite smoke box and fire box.

Anyway. Have some more closeups.

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