B-Mann SD45

[One of One-Sixty]

How good are the Bachmann SD-45s?  Since I have seen them going really cheap lately, I figured I could use some in my push/pull fleet of passenger cars. 

[DaveB]

Spookshow has his assessment of the SD45s and a lot of other locos on his website located at http://www.visi.com/~spookshow/locos.html

Beyond that, I seem to recall some threads in the last few months, but I am not sure which forum, maybe trainboard

[Mark5]

Bachmann really screwed up the radiator fans. Other stuff is messed up too, including the fact that it rides way too high over the trucks.

I give it a D.

With a considerable amount of work, it can be made decent.

Mark

[David Leonard]

If you get a Bachmann SD45, at least make sure you get one from the second run (higher road numbers than the Bachmann illustrations). The first run lacked the blower ductwork on the firemen's side. Also, the undecs are first run, so you'll want to avoid them, unless the blower duct thing doesn't bother you.

[GaryHinshaw]

You should ask Skipgear what he thinks.  He managed to turn a lemon into lemonade:

http://therailwire.net/forum/index.php/topic,18821.msg167699.html#msg167699

But I'm sure it was not easy.

[SkipGear]

Most of the visible work done to mine was easy. I don't care what others say, the body on this one is better than the Kato. It is narrower and the detail is finer. The fans are easy to fix with some photo etch fans. The radiator vents are a little harder but not bad. I opened them up with a dremel and small square file, then used fine mesh to replace them and brought the mesh down a little farther to make the correction. Other than that, a little filing here and there to soften some corners on the top edge of the loco.





Mine was also and undec so I had to make the blower duct. Again, not hard to do, just a take a strip of styrene, notch it to clear the front duct and the cut a slot out to represent the opening to the rear.

The nose with ratchet brake is a casting pulled from an Atlas SD something.
The fuel tank is from a Kato SD something.

The hard part was lowering the body on the frame but that also resulted in a big increase in performance. Lowering the body ended up removing the contact pads on the chassis so I replaced them with PB springs which helped tracking and improved pickup.



Not sure I would do that again.

The rest of the changes were loco specific details, blanking out the rear number boards, low headlight, ratchet brake nose, ditchlights, grabs, lift rings, etc.

[Ed Kapuscinski]

Holy snot, you really DID make lemonade! That's really nice!

[wm3798]

I'm sure this has been asked or answered before, but how does the cab width compare to a Kato?

Lee

[SkipGear]

Holy snot, you really DID make lemonade! That's really nice!

Thanks Ed, I consider that pretty high praise.

I'm sure this has been asked or answered before, but how does the cab width compare to a Kato?

Lee

The nose casting is straight off of an Atlas loco and it was actually a touch wider than the cab opening if that is any indication. The stock nose was ever so slightly narrower than the replacement casting. I never really measured by side by side, the Bachmann long hood is visibly narrower than the Kato. I borrowed one to compare so I don't have a way to take a comparison shot now.

[Mark5]

the Bachmann long hood is visibly narrower than the Kato. I borrowed one to compare so I don't have a way to take a comparison shot now.

That because all Kato EMD's (at least the SD40, SD40-2, SD45, and tooled for Atlas GP30/GP35) have fat hoods to accommodate  Kato's motor.

Skipgear did a fantastic job on the Bmann SD45, but I'm not sure how many of us want to put that kind of effort into it.

Mark

[MichaelWinicki]

Heck, I'd simply love to be able to improve the pickup on mine without having to grind the bottom off. 

[Ian MacMillan]

Man Tony, talk about polishing a turd...Thats looking pretty good.