While I'm not mad about the prototype Re 460 - the skirted Pinnanfarina-designed body is a bit Mr-Blobby for my liking - you might recall me being pleasantly surprised with my purchase of an old second-hand one from the UK.
Upon getting it home, I promptly painted over the '2000' numbering on the nose to reflect the current livery as reflected above. The '2000' was added to the prototype for the same reasons it was to the Knight Industries Two Thousand: because it sounded all futuristic back in the days before the actual year 2000 rolled over.
The obvious things remaining to be tackled are:
- the round hole in the roof used for switching between track and panto power
- the massive pantographs
- the massive cutouts in the roof for the pantographs
- eliminating one coupler and adding a front headstock/plow
And after an hour or so, some progress was made. Alas I descended to bowels of the train room without my phone, so no in-progress pics... and a few of the 'before' state had to be stolen from the internet:
Some thin plastic was added to the roof to cover the hole and build up the areas around the panto a little.
A white sunshade was added inside (below), and a start made on building the lower front apron.
The next job will be to finish that lower chin off with some detail and stick some etched pantographs on top.
Yes the roof is a bit dark on these models but I'm not sure i would do a great job repainting it without making a mess of it...
As a reminder, this is what it looked like previously with the coupler in place:
