I swapped engine shells and handrails between a good running old Atlas RS-3 and a poor running old Atlas RS-11. I did this basically to get a different road name on a good running chassis so it could be assigned to its own train. So now what do I do with a nice shell on a poor running chassis that I had tried to get running better a number of times? I could have relegated it to a piece of yard art but then figured it would be happier running as a second engine in a consist. So I decided to make a dummy out of it.

I removed the motor and associated drive shaft/worm gear, driver gears in both trucks so they freely rolled, headlight circuits, and a lot of the split-frame metal to reduce the dead weight of the engine. I left the wiper electrical contacts in the trucks if I wanted to hand wire the headlights back in later. So the now scary looking frame looked like the picture below.

When the unmodified shell, handrails and couplers were put back on, the now dummy engine took its new place as the second engine and was over-the-road again.