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June 20 Gift from a Friend

This was a gift from a friend. We met on a Model Railroad Forum where he had posted a answer to a question from another Railroader. I had a similar problem and I e-mailed him for more details. We have become good friends and often share our Model Railroad hobby information. He Lives in Ohio and models the Ohio road names as well as the NKP. His favorite locomotive is an EM-1 while mine is a Southern Pacific AC-9. We are both interested in remotoring the older articulateds. I got him curious about the SP engines and he bought a Cab Forward off E-Bay and later an Akane SP AC-9. His brother had a Cab Forward and it was given to my friend after his brother died so he didn't want to ding that one installing a new can motor so he bought the E-Bay engine to experiment with. He has since decided not to remotor either of the Cab Forwards so he sent me his E-Bay prize as a gift.

It was very close to being a basket case locomotive. The snow blade was with it as was the cab roof, the chassis was intact which was a surprise. The front coupler box was dinged and the coupler was missing along with the marker lights, horn, whistle and the leading truck.


I purchased a casting kit from Micro-Mark last year to make missing and broken Rivarossi parts as I have a large fleet of Cab Forwards.


The coupler, horn and both marker lights in the picture above are replacement castings made from my molds. I also added the glass in the windows and changed the number from 4272 to 4270. I had a new leading truck assembly in stock.


The Rivarossi motor was working very good so I didn't replace it. The picture above shows the whistle casting in place and the added wire from below the Monkey Deck to the tender for the rear light. The left rail power is original Rivarossi connecting through the drawbar.


The tender that came with the engine was a Y6B coal tender, I bought this oil tender off E-Bay earlier. I installed a white LED in the rear light housing. This locomotive is now a beautiful showpiece as well as a very good runner.

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