Jewelery, Part I

Jewelery, aka, everything that comes off with a wrench.

I've been quite lucky so far, to run across a good number of parts for the project, including headlight and number board components.

The headlight is complete, aside from the outside "doors", which hold the bulb. These are on order, and headed home as we speak. The bulbs that I managed to find are 12vdc, 100W Marine GE 4545s, which is a preferred choice in the collector's world. Each bulb should consume about 8.6a, if I did my math correctly.

I ended up buying a whole housing...

When the GP/SD/F/E series locomotives were introduced, the number boards used were what I consider a "scoreboard style". Each of the 4 (or 5) characters on the number board have their own separate slot, where they would slide into the housing. The main purpose of this was to allow a locomotive to display the train number on the boards...for example, Train #48 would have "48" displayed. When the train reached it's destination, the conductor would go into the locomotive, remove the box, and slide in the revised train number, and continue the trip.

The 2405 in 1975, John Hill Photo

A good number of railroads used this feature, but not the SOO---at least not in any photos I have seen. These number boards lasted in service into the early 80's on most SOO GP9s, when the standard EMD style black-on-white boards came into use.

I was lucky enough to acquire a left and right hand numberboard box for the restoration. I will eventually (as time and money allows) replicate both numberboard styles. But, I am a fan of the older version, which will be the one I will reproduce first.