Excllent article.

I rebuilt this Athearn switcher over 25 years ago, but did not use the Atheran motor, it was replaced with a NWSL can motor. Did similar work to the trucks, adding thrust washers available from Athearn and replaced the sintered iron wheels with NWSL sickle silver wheels. What a transformation in performance.Talk about slow speed control.

The shell was undecorated and it was detailed for the Milwaukee Road. A number of detail parts were added such as the front grill, pilots and other details that Milwaukee Road switchers had. I also installed constant/directional lighting which was big back then.

After 25 years, it still performs like a jewel. With a bit of work, these Atheran switchers can be tuned up and run as well as anything new on the market.

Nice!

Nice blog rem.

Really like your MILW SW Montanan!

Andre

Building the Cab

Cannon & Co cabs look much better than the thick walled cabs that come on the Athearn shell. There’s at least two variants on EMD switcher cabs. The early switchers from the 1940’s up until an early phase SW7 have rounded windows, everything after that has the more common rectangular windows. The Cannon kits come with multiple walls with different louvre and battery boxes so prototype photos should be consulted. 

The walls of the cab need to be prepared before they can be glued together. The draft angle and any flash needs to be lightly filed off of each piece so that the edge is square, test fit pieces together and slowly sand and file until they fit together cleanly. 

Before any thing is glued together, any holes need to be drilled in the plastic. The walls are too thin to easily drill through once they can’t be supported from behind.

This is especially important on the front and back walls. They are very weak because of the windows. This is the best time to add the rear head light and drill it so it can be lighted later. It’s also a good idea to add the horn and patch any windows that will be plated over. 

Once everything is ready and has been dry fitted, start gluing parts together with a thin solvent. I find that a small syringe is the best applicator. A small drop of solvent can be pushed through the needle and then dragged along the interior seam. In my experience, this is better than a small paint brush for delicate work like this.

Test fit, test fit, test fit. It’s much easier to make corrections and adjustments before the entire cab is glued together.

The walls need to be held square to the rear box while they are being attached. I used a square from a ruler.

Once the side was tacked to the rear box, I reinforced the joint with some 0.020” styrene. The second piece on the work bench was laminated over the first piece and the side of the rear box.

The left side wall was added in much the same way as the right.