One thing I did not notice until I was ready to paint my model
is the seventh hood door from the rear on the right side has a
water sight glass, the same as EMD Dash 2 locomotives. Make
this sight glass by drilling two holes then connecting them with a
knife or file. Continue filing with a small round file until the hole
matches the size of the sight glass in a Cannon hood door or
shell from an Atlas or Athearn EMD Dash 2 model.
The finished long hood is shown in [19-22].
The cab and short hood
I built the Cannon cab following the instructions included with
the kit, except I substituted the Hi Tech Details cab front for the
Cannon part. The Hi Tech package includes two different cab
fronts and no instructions, so make sure you choose the right
19
19. Completed long hood left front view.
Pan-Am Railways SD45R - 9
20
20. Completed long hood left rear view.
part. I used the one where the tops of all the windows line up,
not the one where the engineer’s front window is taller.
The real MEC 610 has insulated cab doors. To model this shave
off the inside handle on the Cannon cab doors and glue a layer
of .020” styrene to the back. Use pieces of .020”x.020” strip to
build out the door hinges, these can be seen in [23]. The door
opening on the High Tech cab front needs to be filed a bit so
the Cannon cab door will fit.
Since I did not plan to light the number boards, I cut pieces
of .010” styrene to replace the clear plastic included in the
Cannon kit and glued them in place. This is a good time to drill
the holes in the bottom of the number board assembly for a
grab iron. Once the holes are drilled, glue the number board
assembly to the cab. Sand off the molded plate between the
MRH-Oct 2014
