How far off is Kato's N Scale C44-9W?

[Ron Plichta]

I've seen a few C44-9W's listed on Ebay and have heard that they're not correct regarding the NS C40-9W.  What's different and what could be done to correct it?  Or better yet, is it in the "close enough" category to not worry about it?

[stillbre]

I'm not up on the N-scale stuff so this is all speculation but if the N-scale shell is the same as the HO shell, the biggest issues are the trucks and grilles under the radiator.  Neither problem is going to be very noticable in N-scale anyway.  A friend of mine has an N-scale layout and runs the Kato Dash-9s and you really don't notice anything wrong with them.  Too small to tell anyway I guess.

[scooter3798]

The other quite noticable thing on the Dash 9's is the location of the headlight. On the Kato units it is mounted in the nose, where as NS has theirs mounted above the windshield. This isn' t too hard to correct, you can patch the nose headlight using some styrene and body putty. The new mount for the raised headlight then needs to be cut into the angled face between the nember boards. This is most easily done by slowly cutting away most of the excess material with a SHARP xacto knife, and then filing and sanding it until it is flat. Once you have a flat mounting spot for the new headlight you can either fabricate one out of styrene (since this is N scale it is so small that this is not hard to do) or you can use a head light housing that was removed from another loco. Once you have this in place, drill out the holes for the headlights. You can try to modify the Kato light bar that came with the loco to try and fit the new headlight, however it is a tight squeeze with the headlight being so close to the roof so I would suggest using fiber optic for the new headlights, or you could use a set of MV lenses. If you use the fiber optic it can be run back to the light bar that runs to the ditch lights on the loco, if you drill a pair of holes in the light bar and CA the fiber optic into it the fiber optic will work just like the old headlight bar. One other thing that you could address is the end handrails. The Kato comes with the narrow front and rear handrails a match to the BNSF units, but incorrect for the NS units which have the full width handrails on the end. You can remedy this problem with a set of loco handrail stanchions from Gold Metal Models and some .005 brass wire. Just hack off the old Kato handrails, then drill out mounting holes for the Gold Metal stanchions (these are etched brass and the set gives you a choice of six different styles of stanchions, they are quite nice). If you have a pair of scale drawings for one of the dash 9's or of a GE model with the wide handrails (CSX uses them as well) this will be a great assistant for getting the holes in the right place. Next glue in the stanchions and grab the wire. I have found it easiest to bend the hanrails once the stanchions are installed, once again the drawings would come in handy here but you could also use pictures of a prototype. Other than that and the before mentioned short comings most of the other details are minor, plus with N scale most of the stuff won't be too noticable. I have painted a number of these units for a friend of mine, converting only the last three to make them closer to the prototypes, and once you get them all together in a consist or at an engine terminal it is hard to pick out which ones are right and which ones are stock Kato. So with that in mind if you can get a good deal on the Kato unit and you don't feel like hacking it up, I don't think it will be a problem. You might get one person out of a hundred that will actually take the time to look at the thing and determine that it is in correct. Hope this helps you out.

      Scooter

[Ron Plichta]

Thanks for the help.  Just by chance, a custom-painted and detailed C44-9W showed up on Ebay and since it had some of the above -mentioned corrections done, I picked it up.  I'm looking forward to adding it to the collection.