1. First I disassembled the car and removed and discarded all interior lighting and cardboard baffles. Since it would be converted to battery power, I also removed the circuit board. I marked, removed, and cut the ends of the steel weight, so that the remaining piece was 16 3/4 inches long.
3. To lengthen the run time on batteries, I de-motored one of the trucks. To do this, I disassembled the power brick, removed the motor and the gear-axle side of the universal joint, and removed the gear inside the case on the swiveled axle. Even with only one truck powered, this car can pull a decent size train!
4. In order to improved the tracking with this long car, I reversed the orientation of the trucks, so that the swiveled axles would be toward the ends. I also had to open a new access hole for the wiring.
5. Unfortunately, the underbody details on this model are a mirror image of the way they are on the prototype (the motor housings should be on the right as you look at the car from the side). Since I had already removed the circuit board, I didn't have to worry about the underbody switch panel. I flipped over the steel weight, so its holes would line up with the mounting screws at the reversed locations. Then I lined up the details, marked the holes, drilled, and reiinstalled in their corrected positions.
6. The air tanks look far too low, so I shortened them by a half inch with wirecutters and a file and remounted them. Because of the cuts, the original screw wouldn't work, so I improvised.
8. Next I linked the transmitter and receiver and got 'er running. This was great fun!!
10. I Installed a Kadee coupler on the front and shortened the Aristo coupler on the other end.
11. This was a Long Island car I wanted to change to Reading. I painted the orange end doors silver. Then I removed the paint on the aluminum sides with a single-edged razor blade. For side-panel lettering I used 1/4 inch stick-on lettering and colored it with Polly-S black paint. I made Reading Diamond Logos for the ends by shrinking an image on a copier using adhesive paper, and for the yellow I used a highlighter pen.
12. I masked the roof blister and painted the radiator screens flat black.
13. Then finally I reassembled the car; roof blister to body, body to frame, then ends to frame and body.
14. After I ran this car for a while, I finally got around to installing LED headlights. I removed the front cab and replaced the headlights with bright yellow LED's (All Electronics #LED-72). I installed a 2-cell AA baterry holder to the back of the cab wall, wired a 2.5 ohm resistor in series, and installed a mini toggle switch under the motorman's door. These lights are incredibly bright and they don't have that bluish hue that "white" LED's have. For more details on this circuit, click bright headlights.
15. For the rear lights (red LED's), I found I could use the original Aristo LED's and wire it the same way I did the headlights. With bright headlights in front and red taillights in back, it looks great.
