Burlington E5 B-unit shell    $40.00


    Finally, a companion for your Kato E5 A-unit.  Like most people that bought the Kato E5, I got tired of holding my breath for them to release a B-unit. So, I did the next best thing and kitbashed my own from two of their A unit shells. The CB&Q E5 B-unit conversion shell will fit the Kato E5 chassis and may also fit the E8 chassis. However, I recommend using the E5 as you will need the window glass from the A unit shell in order to mount the shell to the chassis. The black plastic light block from the A unit shell is used to attach a front coupler for the unit.

E5 B unit casting
    The shells are cast in white urethane resin and some minimal window flash will need to be cleaned up. These photos show the shell after clean up and painted in gray primer as it is difficult to photograph the bright white urethane resin.
E5 B unit casting
 
   Matching the paint of the Kato unit can be somewhat problematic. A few modelers have had good results using Alclad paint over various base undercoats. However, I have found Alclad somewhat tricky to apply and I was never completely satisfied with the results. Perhaps it's just me. I have almost totally switched over to using Tru-Color paints for all my paint applications and I stumbled on a combination that worked out better for me. Your results may vary but you might want to try using Tru-Color Silver over Tru-Color New York Central Dark Gray. I can't say it's a perfect match for the original Kato finish but it's close. (The original finish can be seen on the fuel tank for comparison) Decals are MicroScale #60-581. 
Painted E5 B unit

FRONT COUPLER

The easiest way to add a front coupler is to replace the front truck with a new E5 rear truck purchased from Kato which has the coupler attached. An alternate method of using a Z scale coupler is listed below.

E5 B truck

ALTERNATE METHOD

    The black plastic light shield/front coupler mounting pad from the A unit will be used to mount the front coupler. It just needs a minor alteration in order to work better when used on the B-unit shell. Basically, a new hole needs to be drilled and tapped behind the original hole and part of the lip should be trimmed as well. This will prevent the coupler from sticking out to far and allow closer coupling between units.

    I used a MicroTrains #905 Z Scale coupler (see above photo) on my model. A regular N scale MT #1015 will also work but it sticks out a little too much as far as I'm concerned. I like the more "scale" look of the Z scale coupler and it works great whether coupled to the Kato A-unit coupler or any other MicroTrains N scale coupler. The choice is yours!
Black plastice light shield and coupler mountAlterations to coupler mount