A while back, I weathered a Chessie ALCO S4 locomotive for a friend of mine, only to have the decoder melt unexpectedly. Decoders frying is a pretty common occurrence in model railroading, so it wasn't a big surprise. So, he sent it back.

I then looked inside and realized the motor had melted a bit too, which WAS unusual, so I sent out to Atlas for a replacement motor. It arrived without flywheels, which require a precise gear pulling action to remove them off the old motor and press gently onto the new ones without bending the driveshafts...well, the old motor basically exploded in the middle of the gear puller operation, snapping off the metal driveshafts so cleanly inside the flywheels that they were useless.

So, I went on eBay and found an identical locomotive from the same run, but undecorated. When it arrived, I noticed a prize: it had already been custom installed with DCC! That saved me an immense amount of time. Initially, I thought about taking the motor out of its cradle, and putting it in the original frame, but had a better idea: What if I just paint the undecorated models' underframe to match the original and put the Chessie shell back on?

I ended up doing that, and it saved me so much time and effort. I installed new handrails, and it's complete and ready for revenue service on a friend's layout.