GG1 Engine Acquired

Saturday I attended the O Scale sale in Strasburg, PA.  I purchased a Weaver Brass GG1 in two rail for a very reasonable price. It is painted as number 926 in Amtrak colors.  When Amtrak acquired some of the GG1s that PRR had in 1971 they dropped the 4 from the number.  So this engine would have been 4926.  Currently this engine has been restored and is on display in Syracuse, NY and is owned by the Central New York Chapter of the National Railroad Historical Society.

As you may recall we are running DCC and in most cased sound DCC.  This engine was equipped with Lionel's FMCC system.  So I needed to take a look under the hood to see what was needed. Below is the shell.  All of the various lights on the engine are connected with some small two pin connectors which will make it easy to connect to a decoder and also easy to remove the shell for working on the engine. Six small Phillip head screws attach the shell to the chassis.

Below is the engine's chassis.  The Lionel unit (OEMEP5C) is still in place on the left.  In the center is a weight and on the right is the speaker for the sound.  I removed the speaker and the unit.  There is a huge amount of room for two speakers and the QSI decoder and even additional weight if needed. Currently the engine is very heavy. 

Here is the Lionel sound and control unit.  It includes the unit, speaker, and two small slide switches. I believe when new the engine had a Weaver lighting system in it.  I am not sure but I think this TMCC unit made by Lionel/FAS and was added later.  I have listed it on eBay as I have no need of it and perhaps someone else can use it.

All that remains is to decide to re-paint to PRR colors or leave it as it is. If it is re-painted and re-numbered the lighted number board will have to be changed.  It may be possible to obtain a new one from Weaver.