HO AEM7AC Rebuild Progress

Hi Guys,

I finally installed the ditch light housings on the AEM7AC. The next step is decaling the locomotive. While I wait for the decals, I will work on the molds for the roof mounted AC radiators.

Here's the link to my project journal: http://www.freewebs.com/marylindsayrr/r ... EM7AC.html

The latest pictures are towards the bottom of the page. Please excuse the poor quality of the photos. Although I did purchase a new camera, it was hard to get a good close-up shot of the locomotive shell, but I think the pictures serve their purpose.

Kyle, looks good so far, but a couple notes:

First, if you're having trouble with masking tape lifting off paint or details, it suggests that the tape is too sticky. One way of dealing with this is to lay the tape down on a flat surface, which you'll need to do anyway if you're cutting it to size, and then peel it up again. It may be necessary to repeat this a few times, but the end result is less-tacky masking tape. Or, 3M sells several different varieties of masking tape with different amounts of stickiness. These lower-tack styles are also sometimes known as painter's tape and are much less likely to damage paint, decals and surface details when removed.

Also, I'm a little confused when you keep referring to "molds" that you are working on. It sounded at first like you were planning to cast your own resin parts for the rooftop resistor grids, which would make sense for doing more than one locomotive, but in that case you'd be working on a master and then making a mold of it. Since you described ordering several of the resistor boxes from Atlas, I assume you are in fact just kitbashing the grids as necessary. You also mentioned "molds" for the ditch lights even though you are using commerically-made parts. I guess what you mean is "castings" instead.

One other minor note is that you mention using "0.005-mm" styrene sheet for the side lettering plates. What you're actually talking about is 0.005-inch styrene, which is the thinnest stock available from Evergreen. Converting from metric, 0.005 mm comes out to 0.0002 inches, which is quite unimaginably thin to be working with! Even standard copy paper measures out to 0.003 inches.

Thanks!

Thanks also for pointing out the incorrect/misleading choice of words Alex. I'll be sure to make the corrections. I assumed "molds" and "castings" were interchangeable but I'll make sure to change that as well.

There was another masking tape that I picked up from 7/11 before I came home for co-op. It worked great but the manufacture's name escapes me. It's one of those "I'll know it when I see it" situations. I think the tape was meant for racing stripes for cars or something.

The new tape I picked up is scotch tape. It worked well with painting the Amfleet cars but when it came to painting fine stripes, the other tape was much more appreciated and missed. I'll take your advice into consideration for future projects as well as this one if masking tape is still needed.

Thanks again!

Where are you getting all the roof detail parts from, I'd like to know, I just chanced on to a cheap undec AEM-7 on ebay. $30 what a steal if you ask me, I was thinking about doing one of the new ACs but was turned off by the roof detail. Thanks for the help.
Nick

Hey Nick!

This is fairly new territory for me too. I am making the AC radiators from extra Electrical boxes that are originally found on the roof of the AEM7.

The key parts are the vertical ends. I will post the steps that I took/will take to kitbash the AC radiators on the roof.

What I can say for now is if you look at photos of the roof detail you will see how to kitbash the parts using those electrical boxes. You can order extras through Atlas' parts dept.

The page has been updated again. I have hit a snag however. Anyone have any suggestions as to how to install the wire grab irons? It looks as if the holes are not big enough for them to slide right in.

http://www.freewebs.com/marylindsayrr/r ... EM7AC.html

The decals have been applied however.

The holes probably got slightly filled in with paint, so use an appropriately sized drill bit (somewhere between #76-80) to clear out the openings. If you don't already have these small drill bits...you really should. Plus a pin vise to hold them, since they won't fit in a standard drill.

Thanks for the quick reply!

Looks like I'm going to have to invest in some new tools.

I've been putting off getting the tiny drill bits for too long anyway.

I'll be going back to school Saturday so I won't get a chance to work on these until some time in June. I'm tempted to bring these with me to work on at school but I'm not sure if I'll have enough time to devote to them.

Thanks again!