Most O gage makers have dummies versions of thier powered units, HO and N I do not know right off hand.

Most of the dummies I run on my HO Siskiyou Line I made myself by gutting a powered unit. I kept all the extra parts as components to maintain my other locos by the same manufacturer. Of course I have 60 some locos, and often many of the same model by the same manufacturer.

Athearn is the only manufacturer I'm aware of in HO that regularly made dummy locos available.

Stewart also routinely sold AB sets where the B was a dummy.

Charlie

I have yet to see anyone market a dummy locomotive in N-Scale. Therefore if you want or need one, you've got to make it from something else.

I have seen people do what Amtrak has done in real life and that is to depower a N-Scale Life Like F-40, put a baggage dore in it so it becomes what some have called a "Cabage" and use them in push-pull service.

Irv

as a dummy unit. And includes the pickup wiring from the trucks -- is a great way to get a really big speaker in an HO unit.  In fact, the Intermountain dummies are F unit drives that failed the QA check in Colorado - the motors are removed along with some of the gearing. They're less expensive than powered units. We sold a surprising (to me) number of these when I was at Intermountain. I recall there were a few months when we had to gut powered engines that worked fine to meet the demand for unpowered units!

Marty

 I guess I have to buy full units and gut them out and use the spares for parts.

Is it possible to power the BB dummies for lights and decoders?  I know they come with plastic wheels but there has to be a way that isn't too hard.

Steve

Steve:

You'll need to replace the plastic wheelsets in the BB dummies. You can order the metal wheelsets from Athearn. The rest of the gear tower in a BB dummy is the same as in a powered unit, minus the gears, so you can pick up track power easily once you have metal wheelsets in the trucks.

The Athearn units took a lot of effort to push.  Replacing the axles with the metal wheels, bronze blocks, and center gear makes them MUCH easier to move.  As Joe said, you'll then have an option to use this for power pickup.  I have a few of them, but I don't really use them much.  I've only got them as I haven't bothered to finish bashing up a GP50 on an Atlas drive.  They work well enough for what I need but eventually they'll be swapped out in favor of powered units.

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S

In N scale there are very few dummy units, mainly because if you run trains on a grade you actually need all that power :)