:|Back in the day when the Atlas Roco GP-9-30 and FP-9 locomotives I had one C&NW GP-9 that ran just fine , but the headlight did not come on. Remove the body and the mech ran just fine and the headlight (grain of wheat bulb) worked. Obviously a pinched wire, but try as I might to seat the very tight fitting shell on the heavily weighted mechanism just the right way I never could get the light to work so it ran unlighted for the rest of its career. Now for a hoo doo steam story. I had one of the last versions of the Atlas Rivarossi IHB 0-8-0 locos. It was a sweet runner, smooth, no burnout of the cruddy can motor like earlier versions had, so I decided to convert it a 2-8-0 using Kadee's very nice pilot conversion kit. This was an easy retrofit install . Put the locomotive on the tracks and it kept throwing a rod, or having wheel slip. Take it apart and re convert it to an 0-8-0, back to its old smooth ways. Lucky I never lost the micro fine screws that hold the drive rods on. I let another modeling friend Kent Hunt take the locomotive to convert and tinker around with, he had the same problem, so there it sits to this day as part of my collection as a smooth running undecorated 0-8-0. That was in the days when companies like Atlas Bachperson er-ah mann etc. just sent you a whole new locomotive if you sent them in for repairs. Nate Goodman (Nato).
