And now for something completely different! [:D]
I’ve always been inspired by John Allen and his layout; The Gorre & Daphetid RR.
What some do not realize is that he built almost everything himself, including the locomotives.
Many of them had no direct prototype for the model, but was built to suit his fictional railroads requirements [:)].
I myself have had a project that has had the time to mature for a little while (about 20 years …), but now the parts that I needed to do it miraculously had ended up in the same box at the construction table [:O].
My layout was in need of a bigger switcher, I have a 0-6-0t saddle tanker and it’s a bit small.
A 2-6-4t would probably be the model, as I´ve always liked the look of that particular type of locomotive.
I had half a chassis from a Mantua-locomotive, and some mixed bits and pieces …
I had found this scrapped shell a while ago, now it became useful:
Here’s how it looked after the first fitting, shorter tanks, another cab, a two-axle bogie, rebuilt drive etc. etc.
I had a Mashima open frame motor that runs like a clock, so I decided to use it for this project.
I made the driveshaft from old Athearn parts.
Here you can see some of the new parts on the locomotive made of white plasticard:
The shell is fixed with a single screw under the smokebox:
I sandwiched a nut between some pieces of plasticard. It will probably not come off sometimes soon…
A little painting, marking and weathering later and it
Nice work. I don’t remember ever seeing a prototype for it, but it looks quite convincing. Was it me, I’d add a headlamp. Did you glaze the cab windows? I think an engineer and a fireman would improve things too.
Jeez what amount of work it was to install decoder and LED-lights in the locomotive
I wanted to have the decoder on the chassis with NEM-plug and then have a simple way to connect the LED-lights in the shell to the decoder.
That was easier said than done …
I have some NEM and micro-contacts at home, but after some pondering I decided to hardwire the decoder directly to the chassis and motor and eliminate the NEM-plug to save space.
Then I tried to connect the lights to the decoder with micro-plugs, but if I was to connect it before I put on the shell, the cables was unnecessarily long and at the risk of being pinched or trapped…
The solution was to have phosphor bronze plates fixed in the shell which then makes contact against plates mounted on the chassis when I mount the shell.
It worked great!
Now I have a completely “finished” locomotive with decoder and lights. More images are coming!
It´s so much fun with a locomotives built by myself, and that the driveline worked so well was really fun.
I have a New Zeland Finscales kit for a standard Baldwin 2-6-2T catalog model in S scale …in brass that requires some Americanization, square off the cab widows, add pilots to both ends, oil bunker conversion for example, possibly valve gear as well, being devoted to the Southern Pacific, they would adorn their tank engines with walkways and safety railings, the possibilties are endless! Excellent job with yours, looks as if it could haul every car in the yard!
Thanks, I have some more pics of how it looks after some of the alterations mentioned above:
I added some lights and a bell, I also made the chimney straighter.
This is how it looks with the warm white LED on:
I´m very happy with it now, and will keep my eyes open for some more scrap locos that I can make something fun of in the future (as long as I don´t wait for another 20 years as I did before making this one [:D])
More images are coming!
