Athearn HO Dash-9 madness

i saw a comment from someone that these can be assembled in 20 minutes...........what is the secret? first of all the lenses are supposed to go in before the cab and radiator are assembled, but they came assembled already?!? now i am finding none of the handrails fit into the holes. am i missing something?????

If it's the old style, you remove the shell and put them in. Unless it's the NS version which'll need the headlights moved to above the cab. And use a drill slightly larger than the holes to open them up a bit. That's what i'm doing with all my athearn locomotives.

thank you andy. that must be a very small drill bit? how to do it without damaging (any further than i already have )

It's a hand drill that i got From Micro-Mark. it has tons of small bits inside of it, and they're VERY helpful. just center it over the hole, and drill through. except on the anticlimber i found that they leave an indentation above the hole by doing this. (they'll be covered by ditch lights though, so im not concerned). and be patient...it took me 2 days to do like, 10 locomotives, and find out im missing handrails and numberboard pieces...joy...