A current thread along these lines seems devoted to diesels, so I thought I would open this up to steam.
Wayback, 3 layouts ago, when I was a free spirit in the late 70’s, I had a road called the Disputanta and Danville Western, (coal hauling fantasy road). I customized an AHM Y6B to make it into something I liked.
I attach a B&W pix taken about 1979.
Those in the know will see that I worked in a lot of “Cal Scale” brass among the plastic. New headlight on a diamond deck plate, extra air pumps on the smoke box cover with an Elesco feed water heater and huge, extra upper boiler air tanks. (The D&DW had monsterous grades!)
Anyone else here ever add to… customize… kit bash… or scratch build a steamer that just never was in the real world, but has a special appeal or was cool at the time or even now. While John Allen certainly seemed to have had no limits, how many of us are bold enough to alter a nice steamer today.
Note* I am still into making up my own road, but I just can’t bring myself to the point of significantly altering a nice $450.00 Blackstone K-27.
I used to restore old 1950’s and 60’s Lincolns and at a car show once, I saw a sign by a tricked out “T” bucket that said “Anyone can restore a rare old car to perfection, but it takes a real man to cut one to pieces to make something else entirely.” This post is now asking for others to show off their skills in dreamland steam alteration or customization.
Anyone else here have the stones to embarrass themselves in front of the purists?
Back in the 50’s/60’s/70’s there was a lot of ‘free-lance’ model railroads. Even MR suggested making a ‘family’ look to your steamers with a standard headlight or Elesco feedwater heatrers, etc. Your AHM steamer is a classic example - Nice Work!
For the sake of discussion, those who have simply modified a pilot or added a different cab, etc., would be OK here. Real railroads did this, too, after wrecks or major rework modifications on selected steamers, etc.
The old k-27 mudhens, as issued in 1903, had only slope back tenders and compound vulcain cylinders. A real weird and rare piece of steamer work! pix below…
The D&RGW quickly modified the tenders to hold more fuel and resemble a normal squared off road engine’s tender. Next, they ripped out the compound vulcain cylinders and put in more common piston steam chest with slide valve gear. A few years later, they switched out the slide valves for the more modern round valve chest and walschaerts gear. They even had different mudhens with either an “inny” or an “outy”. (Inside tilted valve chests and outside tilted valve chests.)
Then there were the one-off, seasonal-as needed, homemade, snow plow pilot additions. The mudhens, after 1930, looked nothing like the originals delivered above. When #455 wrecked, RGS threw on a distinctive standard gauge cab that made it stick out like a sore thumb among its fellow Mudhens.
D&RGW, K-28’s had to suffer through the 50’s-60’s movie and early tourist fad by having a totally rediculous and insane looking diamond stack cover and, ultimately, two disgraceful gawdy paint jobs.
So…A bit of monkeying around with steamers on a MR layout, provided they make some sort of sense based on need, convenience or economy, would certainly be allowed.
Actually, I did something similar to that old Rivarossi 2-8-8-2, the results of which came out very similar to yours–I was shooting for a ‘kinda-sorta’ D&RGW L-131. I had the loco until it wore out (by that time, I’d been able to purchase a used PFM L-131, anyway).
I did ‘customize’ a brass PFM ATSF 2-10-2 into a ‘kinda-sorta’ Rio Grande F-81 2-10-2 some years back, using a lot of Cal-Scale and PSC brass detail parts–I still have the loco and it still does pretty yeoman service on my Yuba River Sub, even though in the meantime I’ve been able to afford a ‘real’ Rio Grande 2-10-2 from PSC.
In real life the CPR had many hundreds of 2-8-0 Consolidations during the steam era, but none of these were fitted with Elesco feedwater heaters while in CPR service. However in modelling life one of these Consolidations, CPR 3953, was leased to the Grizzly Northern Railway and quickly retrofitted with an Elesco system, as shown in the photos below - a Bachmann Spectrum 2-8-0 modified using CalScale parts - headlight, feedwater bundle, feedwater pump and top mounted inlet valve.
Back to real life, I later discovered that CPR 2-8-0 Consolidation 3716, built in 1912 and disposed of in 1966, has found its way to the Kettle Valley Steam Railway in Summerland BC, where it has been beautifully restored and fitted with an Elesco, as shown here.
Another demonstration that there’s a real life prototype for many flights of the modelling imagination! [:D]
I’ve done quite a few brass locomotives for a friend who models the CNR, but that was simply modifying or adding details to make a stock model look more like a particular locomotive. Here are a couple of examples.
The CNR bought 10 USRA 2-10-2 s from the B&A and ran them through their shops before placing them in service
Akane USRA 2-10-2 (with a Bachmann tender)
In the shops:
In service:
The prototype:
No before photos of the rest, but most involved adding a feedwater heater and re-piping as required:
Brass USRA Mikado:
Athearn USRA Mikado (this one got a new pilot, and complete re-piping, plus modifications to the cab and tender:
Brass CNR S-2-a:
Here’s a BLI Mike, turned into a “what-if” CNR loco for another friend. She wanted an Elesco fwh and an all-weather cab on a USRA loco. CN had all three components, but not all on the same loco.
Really nice work you guys! I am very envious of the talent and detail that you folks have poured into those locos. Custom tenders are also a nice item to work up as no road steamer is without one. To take a Tyco mike, which is about as spartan, crude and bare bones as one could get and turn it into the above example is a nice piece of work.
Also cool is the effort to go prototype for specific real engines that the model makers do not produce via alteration of a generic that they do make. Customization doesn’t have to go way outside the norm
WOW!!! Well, I should not even try to contribute here, however, this one is special…
(& not finished!)
Here is another shot of my TYCO 2-6-2 Prairie locomotive I am customizing. This is the only (now) working locomotive that survived my childhood. This was approx. a 1974 unit & I was using it when my Grampa made a 4’ x 8’ layout over a door frame. This loco ran on flex track that had stapled fiber ties back then. As you can see I am attempting to make more Scale modifications to it, & there is a huge bag of additional details that I did not locate, and are missing, but will be included later. I am in a conundrum about the front boiler plate, the non-scale (TYCO Signature) headlight ‘irks’ me, but some of me wants to keep it for a nostalgia aspect… But then, I am also motivated to put an appropriate one on it to not destroy the entire effort of the customization. Well, I just donno, stay tuned…
What a difference a few details make, Chad. [tup] If you decide to remove the original headlight, the best tool is a hacksaw, then clean-up with a mill file and finish with modeller’s files and/or a cut-off disk in your Dremel.
I’m doing a couple of simple conversions for another friend, and both had a similar cast-on headlight. He tried to remove the one on this Tyco Pacific, but got careless with the hacksaw, and I had to finish the job with a mill file. A Cal-Scale smokebox front covered the sloppy saw work, and I added a Cal-scale headlight and bracket:
The other loco is a Varney “Old Lady” Consolidation. I removed the cast-on light and replaced it with one like that used on the Pacific, giving both locos a bit of a “family look” as they’ll both be lettered for his freelance road.
To further enhance the family look, I replaced the Tyco cab with one from my scrap box, sawn off a Varney boiler some years ago. The Tyco cab was attached with a screw, so removal was easy.
I had to modify the Tyco boiler to accept the new cab, then alter the frame to allow everything to fit back together. Because the cab is longer than the original, the loco looked a little gangly, so I added a home-made stoker engine, some piping, and a cold water pump for the Worthington fwh.
The engineer’s side got a non-lifting injector from the parts drawer, and some piping, tied-in with the cast-on pipes on the boiler. The tender is from an Akane USRA Mike.
I’ve never taken a photo of a loco I’ve had for a LONG time, so bear with me:
The loco in question is a Baldwin 0-8-0T, class of 1897, a brass model of a (Japanese) Imperial Government Railways 4020 class, 1:80 scale, 16.5mm gauge. Ken Kidder imported them in the early 1970s without identifying anything except their Baldwin origin. I bought mine (as a kit) several years earlier in Yokohama.
Soon after assembly, the inadequate pickup from the insulated drivers was replaced by a home-brew that made contact with all four drivers instead of just two.
In 1981 I decided to upgrade it to make it suitable for use in 1964. Off came the buffers and vacuum brake hoses, on went air tanks (on top of the side tanks clear of the engineer’s line of sight) air cooling coils (between air tanks and domes) and a Westinghouse one lung air brake pump on the side of the smokebox, with its exhaust routed through a muffler attached to the back of the stack. This is very much in line with Japanese practice for similar upgrades. The result received number 42 and the `Tomi Maru’ badge of the Tomikawa Tani Tetsudo, and went to work shifting cars around my colliery module.
A couple of years later I took it to an open house at a club I was thinking about joining. I was accosted, then verbally chastised, by a `brass locomotive collector’ for, “Ruining that Ken Kidder HO (catalog number, which I disremember) that I need to complete my collection.”
I don’t think I made him any happier when I informed him that I had purchased it in kit form to move cars at my Japanese prototype coal mine, that it was a model of a `Built by Baldwin for Japan’ prototype, wasn’t HO and represented a loco that ran on 42 inch gauge rails. His reaction? “Oh! I didn’t know that. I wonder why Kidder imported it if it was never used in America.”
(I wasn’t feeling mean enough to point out that the famous
When I was in HO and especially back in the 70’s when Varney’s old lady was still being offered, I should have ordered a couple from the old AHM ads in the front pages of the old MR magazines. Unfortunately I was more into mallets back then. I hope to maybe still find one as a kit or built at a train show…Maybe this weekend at Timonium.
I have a Spectrum Consolodation that I modified to make it look more like an MEC prototype per an article in MR some years ago. The biggest modifcation was replacing the stock pilot with a brass CalScale boiler tube pilot. Other mods include replacing the pilot stairs with a step, changing the contour of the cab roof and vent hatch, and handrails on the tender. The decals are from Highball Graphics. It has an engineer figure and a fireman shoveling coal; these old steamers did not have stokers. It has a Tsunami decoder.
I also have a Mantua 2-6-6-0 that I upgraded with a brass detail set that was available when these locos were new, but do not have pictures. I plan to repaint and re-decal it to match an MEC prototype. Also have a Gensis Mike awaiting conversion to MEC similar to the consolidation, above. One of these days… [swg]
Here is my Northern Pacific W3 Mikado, bashed from a Rivarossi Mikado. This was done before detail parts from Precision Scale and the other detail parts became hard to find. The tender was shortened and a brakeman’s Doghouse built. New pilot, sand dome and stack, new catwalks along side the boiler a bunch of new piping and gizmos added to make it look like a W-3. I still need to convert this one from DC to DCC and it could use a bit more weathering.
The above is a Broadway Limited NYC J-3 Hudson, converted to the Northern Pacific’s 2626 A1 “Timken” Bearing Company Northern 4-8-4. (Yes, it is missing a pair of drivers). I don’t think the actual “Timken” Northern would have fit on my Bowser Turntable! For my purposes, it works very well and $1,500.00 or more for a Brass N.P. Northern is far above my pay grade!
Respectfully I must ask, since when are PSC, Cal Scale, or other parts hard to find? Every time I need such parts I simply do one of two things - give my LHS a list and usually have everything I need in a week - OR - call PSC or Bowser directly and place an order - which usually arrives in my mailbox in a week or two.
I just ordered some trailing trucks from PSC as recently as a month ago - had them in a few days.
Personally I think it makes more sense for such products to be sold direct by the manufacturer to the consumer, than to have them sitting on hobby shops shelves waiting for someone to happen to need it in that community. Or for them to be lost on distributor shelves waiting for some local hobby shop to need them. Rather than being spread all over the place waiting to be bought, central distribution makes more sense - it is working well for Athearn.
With today’s rapid shipping and communication via the net, direct sales is the future of efficient and profitable commerce for lots of specialized products.
Neither Bowser or PSC has been out of stock on any item I have needed in the last few years - seems to me detail parts are very available?
On parts Availibility, I agree, if I place an order they usually show up, some quiockly but others a little time.
I have had this happen with many manufactures, & most of the time the results are worth the wait.
Here is something to ponder…
“Most folks do not have the patience for MY patience!”
To rip off another commecial slogan, ‘Slow down, & Model…’
There’s some really nice work in this thread- good job, everyone! I only have a meager contribution to this thread.
It’s still a work in progress, but I’m taking an old 4-4-0 and modifying it to look more like a Shay locomotive, because 1) I like how that looks and 2) it fits my narrative for it. It’s an engine near the end of its life that the railroad is using as a yard engine, with steps on front and back (to be added- see the flat front plate).
I’ve taken off the front pilot, added a coupler, and replaced the stack. I also plan to touch up a few detail spots. I also added the loose fence around the tender to keep in the small logs I’ll be putting in- the molded plastic ones looked awful. Then, the whole thing will eventually get a paint job and decals.
So, Sheldon, your sole purpose in life, is to find the one miss-spoken phrase in a post and lecture the perpitrator to death on the horrible mistake he/she has made, while boring everyone else to tears?
To everyone else, I stand corrected, detail parts are actually still avaliable, talk to Sheldon!
My son came up with another concept at a train show a few years back. After seeing a few consists running with midtrain helpers, he asked my why diesels, why not steam. True, midtrain and rear end helpers did run on prototype trains back in the day, but its easy to do with diesels, especially with dummies.
So when we got home, out came the junk box, and we cobbled together 2 engines out of 4 busted up Chattanooga Choo Choos, the fitted them with spare tenders. The headlights do make use of the electrical pickups, but other that that , they are true dummies and roll very easily.
While not true detailed copies of the prototype, the do serve a purpose, and sometimes mystify spectators as to how I could possibly speed match engines so well![swg]
