Aristo Teddy Bear Express Surgery to real Pennsy A3A

Garden Railroading
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Aristo Teddy Bear Express Surgery to real Pennsy A3A

I picked up this lovely piece of hideousness at the BTS, its in good shape except its bunker was broken off. This is a good older version with the better drive brick. AC sold this as a tender version based on a real Pennsy A3, and as the tenderless tank/bunker A3A version. The only real problem was AC got cheap and didnt provide simple screw on water saddletanks. I decided to rework it as a real A3A which meant grafting water tanks onto the boiler,
Some styrene and CA adhesive later:

Here is the bunker repair:

Painting right now, brush acrylic over the hideousness, its easier to cover everything and gives the spray paint something to adhere too, will use Floquil flat on the driverods otherwise it would stick with acrylics. More pics when it gets more complete…I’m going to need alot of paint.

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Finally got it sprayed with black primer, evens everything out, nothing like photos to show you every place you missed.

Looks waaaaaaay better than a week ago, still needs lettering and some weathering. Also need to replace the broken front pilot steps.

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Wonderful! Those things go very fast, and are powerful for their size.

P.S, how did you manage to post the second post before the first one?

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Thanks, I went back and edited the first post about the painting, the time must default to the last modification made. [co]

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That makes sense.

I have one of these (unmodified, and with an actual railroad paint job), and it will actually take curves on two wheels at half throttle, and leave the rails completely at higher voltages. Does yours do this?

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So far no, but then I run my stuff slow to begin with