Well got the early holiday a gift a brand new SP GP38-2 from USA Trains, via a local dealer. The engine required some addons and so this is where the sound system came in. The engine out of the box was flawless, though I would have preferred the older lettering to the Speedo Lettering on the engine. But why whine right, so I got that baby out of the box, unwrapped it and began surgery with a #1 Phillips. The fuel tank must first be removed, and there are only two screws holding it in place. Once those were off, the cover easily comes off. Surprise!!! They have a wire taped on the bottom awaiting your sound system. In this case the Techs at Phoenix have the most pleasant voices so I got their sound system again. Installing it, I opted to go the non trigger method and stick simply with the track voltage rather than sensors. Wise Move! The speaker with Phoenix sound systems has 4 screw holes, but the GP only has 3 in a triangled layout. So a little bit of glur to the rescue on the edges, what would I do without a bottle of Zap. Glued it, hit it with the stiffener spray, task done, speaker installed. Next was the volume switch. This required installing a drill bit sized 1/4 inch. I wisely chose the back of the fuel tank offset of the buttons and higher up. Than came the board. First I got the speaker in place than the volume control and finally the power wires from the engine. Remember that when doing the wires with the Phoenix connector plug. Red goes in number one and Green in number two. Nailed that and finally stuck the double-stick tape on the back board, than mounted the board inside the front tank wall. You will have to carefully bend up the speaker wire attachment end leads to squeeze and mount the battery between the speaker and the board with the other two double-stick tape squares that Phoenix supplied. Once that was accomplished plugged the battery in and I buttoned it up. I generally leave the computer plug off and I am not a big sensor fan as with the voltage determining sounds on a diesel it is much simpler and you can pull sound fx by shifting the voltage up or down on the transformer. Next were the wheels. I HATE traction tires, they even smell horrible too. So that means the wheels were next. I got two pairs of the F3 wheels in a bag from the dealer as the gp wheels and f unit wheels are the same.
Took the gear box cover off, 6 screws and it pries off, no problem. Took the two end truck side screws off and pried gently the wheel out of place. Than got the solid wheel with no traction tires and got it in place. A little extra grease for the ends of the axle and those babies slipped into the journals with no problems. There is a small squared gold seat on the axles between the gear and the wheel. You must seat this flush and even in the block or you will never get it to work right. Repeated this procedure on the other motor block and plenty of grease and than buttoned them up, well not quite. I also HATE pickup shoes so all four as usual had to go, and go they did, than I buttoned that sucker up. Those were all the easy parts. Now came the Dallee Dual Mars Light. What would a SP engine be without a Dual Mars Light…right?
Okay getting the screws off, I learned a lesson from the half burning GP30 which I corrected This time I cut the L.E.D.'s from the ceiling board and removed the cab only. Once the cab was off I went to work on carefully getting the ceiling of the cab off. Cut the Dallee leads and did the wire routine which by the way is a major pain in my Coal Burner! Got the LED’s in place and finally I soldered the leads to the old led mounts on the board. The Dallee board has stick-em tape. I decide to stick in on the ceiling. Once done, I got back to assembling this and it worked pretty well as far as the reassembly went.
With all of this work done, the time had come so out went the ol’ Bridgeworx and hooked it up to the outdoor layout. On the bottom of the GP38-2 are four switches. The smoke unit off, left that way. Honestly with Diesels I never use smoke. Motor is always shipped on so that was a no brainer. Than there are the lights and the sound. Those on. Got the engine on the layout. Turned the power on and crossed my fingers.
PROTOTYPE here we come. Everything but a snowplow as most SP’s had them by default, but not USA or Aristo. So went ahead and throttled it up. Sound comes on turbos kick in, loud too, enough to bug a few bad neighbors (pun) and than no pickup shoes. I had to use some old LGB brass which was not well cleaned. But the USA wheels without the pickup boots worked flawlessly, and I really do mean that as to where my old LGB lococ would be very jerky at many places, the USA pickup is far superior. I guess that is why LGB is OOB…you figure that one out. Metal wheels I hooked up 25 cars and no problems the engine handled them without traction tires. Than I noticed something. Ah the Lars lights, they worked and they worked very well. No more shorts like a issue in my GP30 a while back which I ended up fixing. Man seeing those mars lights blink was very cool indeed. My only complaint is that Dallee needs to make them blink a bit faster. Perhaps if they can view some train videos they can time them from there. Well with all of this nailed down, it was time to pack everything away. Just as I put away the last of my Sunday railroad stuff, someone walked in with a new holiday gift for me, a USA SP-GP9 and let me tell you with the vintage “Black Widow” paint scheme, and that was no plain bergie.
Stay tuned as we take that GP-9 to more SP protocol. Too bad it wasn’t scarlet and grey but I’ll take it anyhow.
