Part 7 - New Haven DEY-3 (Alco S-1) #0967: Low-Profile Cab

FINALLY! we get to The Most distinctive feature of the New Haven Railroad's Alco switchers (well, the "low" hood ones anyway) - the "low profile" cab, necessary due to the railroad's extensive overhead wire.

Diagram from the NHRHTA's Shoreliner magazine, Vol. 35, #1, p. 15

As mentioned many times before, but in case you missed it :^) Mike Redden provides 1-piece resin castings of this distinctive feature of the New Haven's DEY-3 and DEY-5 switchers. And you can get them here. The resin he's using now is a more robust and less brittle than past iterations - but you still need to handle them with care (especially that front roof overhang. Ask me how I know...).

And there are a couple of pro-tips which I'll share below. . .

A bit of good news is that you can use the P2k upper cab grab on the Redden cab. The bad news is that the pilot holes are positioned just slightly too narrow for an easy fit.

Fortunately, it's an easy fix - just remove one leg of the grab . . .

. . . and glue in place as normal. The handrails next to the door have to be custom made from .015" wire since - due to the lower roof - they're shorter than stock. Thankfully, pilot holes are provided and Mike has a bending jig available to make it easier to form the wire.

With the pilot holes provided, you have only to locate 3 holes on the cab - and the one above is for the engineer's side handrail. I figured the height by test fitting cab and handrail to the frame and eyeballed the horizontal position, not wanting to drill too close to the corner.

While the handrail looks similar to a stock handrail on an Atlas S-2 (since the factory hole is similarly located), in hindsight I should've tried to drill the hole a bit closer to the corner. It's a matter of looks versus risk. YMMV.

The other two holes you have to locate and drill are for the step-to-cab handrails. You use the P2k handrails and I'm test fitting/positioning them in the photo above.

Marked, then drilled (you can see a false start on the left)

Fortunately, the bracket/bolts covered the mistake.

While in future iterations Mike may provide those 3 additional pilot holes, even more importantly, he'll hopefully provide a way to secure the cab to the frame/body. Fortunately, the cab slides easily over the rectangle of the P2k body casting. Unfortunately, it just as easily can slide off - or, at the very least, leave an unsightly gap between the cab and the frame. So I took advantage of the fact that the interior of the cab walls have bracing for strength . . .

. . . used my calipers to locate a point where two braces crossed one another . . .

. . . and glued a bit of styrene to act as a retaining lug.

I then tapered the lug to allow the cab to press down over it and lock in place. And, yes, I can get the cab off :^) But you'll want to be sure you've filed the lug down to the point where it just grabs the side of the cab.

And that, my friends, concludes the "build" portion of the project! I did one more quick test fit of everything . . .

. . . disassembled it all again to prep for PAINTING! Which is next.... So stay tuned!