RhB Ge4/4 II body transplant

[PaulRhB]

I aquired this red Arosa body from the early 2043 model as I had the fantasy liveried version of the same loco which matched the Arosa stock. There appear to be three versions of the bodyshell for this loco, this one is the earliest with round lights and two holes on the right hand side of the cab front for the old electrical socket. Version 2 has a plastic plug with an mu socket to disguise the smaller connector ,(see the last photo), and finally the 3rd version has the modern square headlights.

First the donor, In the fantasy blue livery also 622 so I suppose it's almost a repaint! (the coach liveries were real)

 

Stripping down, this involved stripping all the handrails, windows, pipes and underframe. The doors were also needed as the bodyshell I aquired didn't include them. These were painted with Nissan red 526 from Halfords.

 

The donor is the later rebuilt version with square headlights so I had to rebuild the internal lighting support at each end to work with the earlier round headlights.

The chassis was painted with Plasti-kote 3102 grey which is a very close match to the LGB parts. Just got to order the transfers for the data panels.

 

I also painted the window surrounds black to see how that looked and I'm going to do the other one now as well.

 

 

I thought this would be quick but the complexity of stripping it all down and transferring the electronics meant I took a load of photos to make sure it all went back in the right places. Nice when it was finished though.

 

This is what they look like before the window surrounds are painted