Model Railroading > Glutton for Punishment

I needed another project locomotive like I needed a hole in the head. But here we are. A few months ago I saw this WalthersProto BN SD9 on Ebay with Tsunami Sound from a 2015 release. Unfortunately the photos didn't show the front end or I would have passed. I always wanted a better model of a BN SD9, a older version with the 4 radiator fans unlike the recent Rapido model. The priced seemed fair so I bought it.
 Well I was very disappointed when I received the model, not only for the heavy glue used on the front pilot, but also the fact the locomotive immediately shorted out when placed on the track. I contacted the seller about returning the model. I found out he was not a modeler, but selling estate items. He really didn't want the item back, so I negotiated to get a refund of most of my money and would attempt to repair or reuse the parts.
 It's been sitting on a shelf for a while now. Last night after I finished a project to reinforce some sagging shelves that hold my long train boxes (4 stacks of 5 long boxes each holding around 12 cars on each shelf), I dug into this locomotive. I love a good mechanical/electrical mystery and was glutton for punishment I guess. What I found was a couple of factory defects in addition to the glue issue. The shorting was caused by the wires to the rear truck being pinched together under the decoder board. The wires melted together because of the short. So I removed that truck and disassembled it because I wanted to replace the wires in total. But then found that one of the helical cut gears had sheared off on one side leaving that axle half loose. It sheared off in a odd manner leaving this "tag" that was getting up into the gears and jamming the truck as well. I've sent a E-mail to Walthers asking for a replacement gear. Anyone experience this with the new Walthers drives yet?
 So this begs the question of how long was the model running before it experienced issues. The pinch was pretty serious, so I don't think it was long...kinda surprised it ran at all. I'm guessing that when the gear sheared off and the tag came up and jammed the gears, that must be when the wires heated up at the pinch point and caused the short. And with the heavy glue used on the pilot, the original owner didn't feel like returning it on a warranty claim.
 The good news is that decoder seems to work fine. With the short, I figured it was a goner. But since I've replaced the wires and installed a idler axle, I was able to run it with no issues yet. I haven't plugged in the lights to see how they work though.
 Now the hard part is replacing the front pilot, which has been more tedious that I figured it would be, mostly because of how I went about it. Thankfully I had a spare Proto2000 SD9 shell that I could use for parts. I used the rear pilot since the front pilot was damaged on that shell as well. I could have cut it straight across, but didn't want the seam in the walkway, so I cut it next to the battery boxes. This has been a lot of work to cut and file everything to fit properly. Walthers also extended part of the frame above the couplers and added a recess inside of the shell for it not present on the Proto2000 model. So I had to carefully carve out that .030" recess from inside the P2K pilot. I used the Scalecoat II Wash Away paint stripper to remove the paint. Now it's ready for some black paint.

Ted Curphey
Ontario, OR

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Buyer beware!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/22/26 08:11 by RRBMail.

Thats tough. I love and hate ebay just for this reason. Its a great place to find good prices and rare locomotives, but I have been burned before.

It looks like your doing some good work and painting looks like it will be easy! Keep us updated on this project.

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