Patched: BN to BNSF to My Layout

BNSF Railway is unquestionably my favorite current railroad but my heart will always belong to its predecessor, Burlington Northern. It's been 19 years since the BN-ATSF merger and while BNSF's fleet contains hundreds of patched units, they are becoming rarer as repainting and newer power sends the older units to the deadline.

As a paean to Burlington Northern, I wanted to add to my N scale fleet a patched Burlington Northern unit. But what kind? Nothing with Cascade Green still prowls the BNSF mainlines so it would have to be a road switcher. I already had two BNSF GP38-2s and an SD40-2R to handle any switching for Dewarville Yard but I figured one more unit couldn't hurt.

I would have liked to have added a GP50 as a tribute to my favorite locomotive from my teenage years. But KATO was the only N scale manufacturer of GP50s and seem to have produced none since the late 1980s. They are found occasionally on Ebay and I already had a "Tiger Stripe" version in my "heritage" locomotive fleet. BN repainted all the Tiger Stripe units into the "White Face" livery that I really don't care for. KATO did release GP50s in that livery but they are even harder to find on Ebay.

To make a long story short, I eventually found a used Atlas GP40 that I knew I could modify into a GP40M, of which BNSF still rosters. A few GP40Ms can be found in the original BN Cascade Green livery but only one or two has not been modified into a remote control unit. An RCU variant would require detailing I did not want to undertake.

This used locomotive was unique in that it was an unnumbered model, meaning Atlas had not painted any road number onto it. Thus I'd only be "patching" the BN logo and title and not any road number. I would still add the road number patches for authenticity. The one GP40M that I could find still in Cascade Green and not made into an RCU was #3006.

BNSF 3006 in Seattle in 2007 (Stan Lytle photo from Locophotos.com)

GP40Ms were part of a initiative by Burlington Northern in the late 1980s not to buy new four-axle road switchers but to buy rebuilds from EMD and MK. These rebuilds used hulks of GP30s, GP35s, and GP40s. They were essentially GP38-2s when complete, though their bodies could still retain the distinctive features of their donor shells.

Converting this GP40 required using three sets of Microscale Decals: 60-25 Burlington Northern Diesels (1970-1989), 60-176 BN Diesels Data, and N scale safety stripes. I made one physical modification; moving the horn from up front on to of the cab to behind the first radiator fan.

This patch unit required more effort than the IR SD45T-2. I first had to patch over the BN logo and title and apply a hood patch to where I approximated a four-digit road number to be on a GP40 that was numbered.

Next, I applied the BNSF titles. The decal sheets I had, of course, did not have 3006 in a straight line for me to use. I had to apply all four numbers separately and that was a pain in the aspirations. I then applied the safety stripes to the sill. 

I then realized that a lot of details were still missing. On the prototype, some of the original white safety stripes remained on the sill. Other BN details like an Interbay (a yard in Seattle) emblem on the nose, and "GP40M" and "Interbay" titles on the sill still survived on #3006. My decal sheets had two of those details; surprisingly, there were no Interbay titles. 

The prototype has ditch lights on the anticlimber. I had long made a decision not to try and add detail parts for these. Doing that for HO scale locomotives was hard enough; for N scale  locomotives the small size of such parts would be a pain to glue on.

So far, I have this: