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Photo 4: Close up inside the nose of the dummy unit with the LED headlight
installed. Note the slot cut from the bulkhead for the antenna.
Photo 5: Part of the fuel tank had to be cut away for the battery leads.
Photo 6: The little camera is only about an inch square.
Photo 7: The camera installed. Note how the antenna was run along
the cab roof and secured with tape.
cut out. Of course this was done before I painted the body. It is
prototypically correct, too, as NYC had two C-Liners with Mars
lights. Numbers 4506 and 4507 were so equipped, although
their lights were later removed. Those same two units also had
three-axle rear trucks to support the weight of their steam generators.
My models will never have this feature but, frankly, I’m
not that much of a rivet counter. I numbered the camera unit
4507 and the motor unit 4505, as that unit was not equipped
with a Mars light.
I used Miniatronics yellow white diodes for headlights; 5 mm
clear plastic diode holders fit exactly in the headlight openings.
The tiny camera was a tight fit in the nose. I had to cut a slot
in the vertical bulkhead that runs across the body so that the
camera’s antenna could lie against the cab roof. The camera is
held in place with short strips of aluminum furnace tape, which
doesn’t ever stretch or sag. It is not installed permanently, as I
might want to try something else with it in the future. The 9v
battery which powers the camera lies in the fuel tank, and is
held in place with Velcro®. I had to cut away some additional
pieces of the chassis unit to make it fit properly into the body
shell under the camera. I installed a mini-slideswitch under the
side skirt to turn the camera on and off. Kadee #6 short shank
couplers were screwed to plywood spacers glued to the undersides
of the chassis units. The plywood was painted flat black
and doesn’t show.
The completed C-Liners look great, run smooth as silk, and
can be operated with the camera on or off. In the “off” mode, I
turn the units around so that the non-Mars light equipped end
faces forward. The only non-scale look to the Diesels is the
darkened Mars light that the camera looks through. I had to
sacrifice some air-hose detail around the couplers, as the frame
units must be twisted 90 degrees when removing them from
the bodies, so that the couplers will go through the smaller size
openings. Brass windshield wiper castings add realism to the
thick molded windows, and I enhanced the plastic air horns by
carefully drilling out the bells to give them some inside dimension.
I haven’t done any weathering on the Diesels, but may do
so in the future. That lightning stripe paint job just looks too nice
to dirty up!
The little camera operates as advertised, and it’s really fun
to get an engineer’s eye view of the layout “as the train goes
rumblin’ through”. It’s even fun to see the unfinished portions
as the loco passes the giant screwdrivers, baby food jars and
62 • O Scale Trains - July/Aug ’06