NOTE: If anyone is thinking about doing something similar to this project, do the following:

1) Put that Athearn BB unit up for auction on E-Bay.

2) Go to Railflyer Model Prototypes and place an order for one of their new walkway module/fuel tank kits with detail parts bundle. You will save yourself an enormous amount of frustration, dremeling, and ultimately realism killing compromises for a price that is still far FAR less than anything you'll see marked on a piece of brass or custom painted high end plastic kit.

I'm plugging this because it's in my best interest to do so. I have 14-16 SD40-2's planned, and I'm going to need something better than what Athearn, Kato, or Atlas are willing to produce. So far only Railflyer has stepped up to the plate and I'd very much like to see them succeed.

Union Pacific GP40-2 1445 was one of two units built in 1983 for the Denver and Rio Grande Western as replacements for two earlier GP40-2's that were wrecked. Originally numbered DRGW 3129, after the UP acquisition it became 5345 and finally 1445 under the current renumbering plan.

From what I've been able to find out on the internet, this locomotive has been in it's original DRGW paint and numbers until recently when it was patched as 1445. If anyone's seen it in the past month or so I'd appreciate an update.

I chose this unit due to the excellent photos I was able to find on the net and it's unique characteristics. It runs on refurbished F unit blomberg "B" trucks, has an 88" nose, welded cab, Q' Fans, exhaust silencer, a later style blower housing, and a rather unique dynamic brake hatch. With updated electronics, it is similar in many ways to a late model GP50.

My model began it's life as an undecorated Athearn model, over the course of this project, it will be extensively modified and detailed to create as exact a replica of the prototype as is feasible with my current skills. It will be built to finescale Proto:87 standards, meaning it will have wheels milled as close to prototype dimensions as is humanly possible and will operate on track that is detailed and constructed in a similarly prototypical fashion.

This website will act as a sort of blog for the project. My hope is that it will allow others to see what I'm doing and provide some input, which in doing so, should help to keep me focused. With any luck maybe someone else will learn a new technique or be inspired to undertake something similar. Updates will be added approximately once a month and will be choc full of spelling, punctuation, and grammatical errors. I'll try to list all the changes I make in the "Updates" column to the right. Pictures should appear in droves once I have something worth taking pictures of.

On a technical issue, all thumbnails when clicked, open larger versions of their respective images in a popup window. If you have a pop-up blocker, you'll need to set it to allow popups from this site. Also, if you're using Internet Explorer (which you shouldn't be since Firefox is better), you may encounter a problem with it's built in script blocker. If you do have a problem, a yellow banner will appear across the top of the page, simply left click this banner, and choose "Allow Blocked Content." I promise that there are no viruses or scripts on this site that will cause harm to befall your computer. Just make sure that you are still blocking scripts and popups from other sites before you leave here.