SNCF in HO: Vintage Jouef CC6500 and CC21000 locos improved!

I have been playing around with a couple of old "made in France" Jouef CC6500 and CC21000. The CC6500 model originates from 1971 and it is somehwhat eccentric. The front doesn't look right, the bogies are undernourished and missing parts and you can see daylight through the grilles. The mechanism is actually incredibly powerful, but cranky and rough (especilly if in the 3 pole version) and will have you begging for a Hornby Ringfield motor very quickly. The mechanism is insanely complicated- the motor faces backwards, driving a horizontal gear connected to the vertical shaft. This then transmits the drive to a series of gears that connect to the wheels. It also means that it is not possile to have working centre wheels on the bogie, with substantial, metal dummy wheels being provided instead.
And yet.....if you compare with the more modern Jouef cardan drive model, the body shape isn't that bad. The lights are actually at about the right height, but teh footsteps and buffers seem a bit low. I discovered that glueing a small washer around the headlight made it look better. I then added footsteps and additional sections to the bogies (cut from spare new generation CC6500 bogies). The paintwork on the front was adjusted as it was poorly masked and not quite right, and below buffer details were added from a new generation CC6500. I discovered that if you clean the contacts up with rubbing alchohol and oil the motor with sewing machine oil, things improve. Also, adding weight over the unpowered pickup bogie means that the loco rarely stalls. Finally, I altered the grey roofline and increased the amount of grey on the roof, substituted cheap plastic Lima pantographs (these are actually shaped quite well) and added horns.
So the loco is still recognisable as old school Jouef, but it looks much better. You can park it next to a new gen Jouef CC6500 and it doesn't look too shabby for an old loco.
After the CC6500, I did the same with a CC21000 (the dual voltage version of the CC6500). However, I paint this one in the post 1978 concrete version of the livery and added snowploughs.

The CC6500 is hauling a representation of train no 163 "Montaigne"- Paris - Bordeaux (as seen on p27 of "Les Grands Trains Special 79- 3/2014). This consists of Lima and Jouef Corails, a Roco DEV "buffet rouge" and Roco UIC-Y brake at the back. Note the loco, buffet and UIC-Y are all in the silver version of their liveries, as the grey version did not appear until 1978. The UIC-Y should probably be second class, but I only had a brake or a sleeper in the silver variant of the C160 livery. Two of the first class Corails have the wrong loco for the period and I had to substitute one Eurofima to ensure enough 1st class coaches.

The CC21000 is hauling the Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Rapide 228) service from Paris to Geneva. This is the distant, early 80s precursor of the current TGV Lyria service. The consist is 2x Heris SBB UIC-Z1 BPMs, 2x Roco SBB 1st class Eurofimas, 1x SBB UIC-X Restaurant and 3x SBB UIC-X second class coaches. All are in uniform C1 orange colours.