The Golden Eagle

I found a 1980 Tyco Golden Eagle C630 on ebay for almost nothing....check this out:

I love the power torque trucks, these locomotives can really pull, which is what I like.  All of my rolling stock is quite a bit over the weight standard so I need the fleet to have about 30-40% of the locomotives equipped with either traction tires or blue box athearn.  What I can do with this C630 is pair it with a slightly modified C628 where all wheels pickup power.  This makes for a very reliable consist.  The C628 slips due to its super smooth wheelsets and it only has 4 powered axles.  By getting power from the additional 2 axles a C628 generally won't stall which will keep the C630 from stalling and that's how I get nice match-up of motive power.....more about my consists and torque tester later.

My plan for this Golden Eagle is to add shiny brass handrails, change the trucks to black, add maybe a blinking led on top with an on/off switch, kadee's and just a bit of weathering.  I know that is all sacrilege for a Golden Eagle, but I intend on using it a lot, so I need to pimp it out...I also have a plan to add neon ground effects which will be totally bad ass....

Next I got another DD40....it's in bad shape, doesn't run, broken all over, but it's a blue box....

I can't resist a cheap DD40.  I already had 3 of these, but as long as they are as cheap as this one was, I can never have too many....there is no such thing as a blue box Athearn that can't be fixed and restored...

I did my first set of brass handrails.  They aren't perfect by any means, or prototype or even straight.  However, now that I know how, my technique will start getting better.  I have made tons of piano wire handrails that turned out awesome, but brass is new to me.  I like it and I'm going to do more of it.

So I got rants and all kinds of other cool stuff for a little later....