This morning I had a small opportunity to work on my Athearn BB switcher (sold as SW1500 but more closely matches SW1200). I had bought it for other purposes but discovered it very closely matched this: (Original Link)
A few weeks ago I took the shell off and got it running (fairly well) as a DC locomotive, obviously that won’t do so I’m contemplating my DCC strategy. I’m thinking of either trying a TCS M1 super tiny decoder or go with something like the NWSL Stanton drive (motor in the truck) and take the space freed up by the old motor and drive shafts and go with a bigger sound decoder.
For now I’m just taking baby steps to get it closer to something more manageable. Today I dissasembled the shell and all the detail pieces:
Matt's Railroad Blog 