Besides brass, do we know if any of the Climax logging engines made over the years are any good? I’m thinking particularly of the one that has the angled piston and rod, rather than that other, boxy little tank thing (no shade on the boxy little tank thing, just not what I’m asking about right now).
Anybody had one? Experiences? Opinions? Wild guesses?
Thanks,
-Matt
MDC Roundhouse has made them. Although it probably isn’t what your looking for. I think rivorossi has made them.
Photo from hoseeker
-bmtrainmaster
Rivarossi made a nice Heisler, not a Climax. Dan
I have been working on my own.
-Photographs by Kevin Parson
I finally have all the parts I need to finish it.
-Kevin
!!! @Kevin. Explain me, please. This is not a kit? Are you building a Climax out of flat styrene sheets? (It looks amazing, btw).
-Matt
Bachmann made some for a while, although they had some bad gear problems early on. I thought they fixed that with some later batches, but I’m not sure.
I’ve got 4 of the Bachmann climaxes. 2 2 truck and 2 3 truck climaxes. All of them needed split gears replacing but once they were fixed they run beautifully. One of the 3 truck ones has a sound decoder and anything over about 2 mph sounds like its going to explode but thats normal as it takes lots of steam to move. I’ve also tried the MDC one but its very noisy and doesn’t look very good so I heavily modified it.
Yes. I could not find a good looking low-slung climax model, and one day I looked into the scrap box and got down to business.
The boiler is from a Tyco “Chatanooga Choo-Choo”, which was what I had on hand.
-All Photographs by Kevin Parson
The frame, motor, and trucks are Athearn, with all the side detail ground off flat.
I fould a small industrial stiwcher body where I could harvest the cab and pilot ends.
The frame and tender were all built from sheet styrene and strips.
There were a few brass details added, and lots and lots of NBW moldings and rivets!
Thanks. It is ready to be painted, and hopefully as soon as my workbench and shop are back together it will be rail-ready.
-Kevin
Pretty cool, Kevin! The one thing that is missing is evidence of the diagonally mounted cylinders.
That could easily be compensated for by panels covering where they would be, as sometimes they would cover over the moving machinery on these, because it would scare horses. Kinda like MDC’s approach. Just a hint to add realism.
Great looking model! Dan
Thanks bmtm, I’ve seen plenty of these in my search for the other. They’re actually growing on me a little bit.
Thanks Dan. Yes, I searched and did not find Climaxes by Rivarossi.
I’ve heard this about Bachmann’s Shays, didn’t know it applied to their Climax as well. I’m curious… are those replacement gears still available (are those the ones from Northwest Rail Link something something?) and more importantly, how fiddly is the job of replacing them? Do you think a clumsy person could do it? With the help of this league of esteemed modelers, I was able to successfully rewire an Atlas loco I got at a swap meet whose reverse light went on when it went forward and whose headlight went on when it went backward, but it was almost more than I could handle – I muffed the heat-shrink tubing, barely managed to get good solder connections. If replacing gears in a geared loco is more complicated or “watchmaker-ish” than that, it wouldn’t be something I’d venture into.
Words to live by. Bravo.
Thanks all. I’ll hang back now but I’m still interested in anyone’s experiences with manufactured (plastic) diagonal-cylinder Climaxes, particularly the Bachmann.
-Matt
MDC only made a Climax A, not the B or C (with visible side pistons).
I have a Bachman B (two truck). Gears broke after a few hours of running. NWSL sells replacement gears:
I have not replaced mine yet, but it’s not “easy”, from what I have read. There are Youtubes on the subject.
My recommendation: buy a brass model, but test it first or buy from a reliable source. Mine gets a lot of mileage…
Simon
Thanks for the word, Simon. This jibes with what I’ve mostly heard about the Bachmann Climaxes. I looked at the NWSL site and the replacement parts are cheap enough. If I see a Climax at the train show tomorrow and it’s a good price I may consider it, but yeah, I don’t really look forward to the necessary surgery I’d have to perform.
-Matt
Replacing the climax gears is easier than replacing the Bachmann shay gears I’ve found. I think I just bought the short shafts in the bogies preassembled from bachmann rather than trying to fit the NWSL ones onto the shafts.
On my model I intended the brass tank underneath the cab to represent a horizontal two cylinder engine powering the driveshaft.
It still needs more work. I was going to detail it more underneath, but everything was so tight that any detail work would have disappeared.
I finally got a set of handrails from an Athearn S12 to use on the ends.
Another project now waiting for the workbench to come back.
-Kevin
The issue with using a diesel chassis to build a Class A Climax is the wheelbase. All the drawings of small Climax locos I have found have wheel bases less than 4ft - 3.25ft appears to be common. Almost all commercial powered trucks have much larger wheel bases 5ft or more. The Roundhouse Climax conversion used their boxcab mechanism - with the large truck wheel base.
Not trying to be a nitpicker because I’ll probably end up in the same position. Just saying there is an appearance issue.
Now back to trying to make that MDC (Roundhouse) mechanism not sound like a coffee grinder.[:D]
Fred W
I was going purely for reliability and operation. An Athearn frame with a NWSL repower kit is hard to beat for works-every-time capability.
Nothing about my layout is prototypical anyway.
[;)]
-Kevin
I bashed together this little fella below a few years ago. I used two NWSL Stanton drives, plus various parts from my parts box, mostly MDC parts. The drives were disguised using trucks from the original MDC climax. The trucks are way too big… but a fun project. I should probably go back to it for improvements.
IMG_20230124_105352 on Flickr
Simon
I won’t try to improve old projects again. I really wish I had some more of my earlier projects in the “as built” condition.
Generally, when I went back to improve them I lost interest, or decided to start over from scratch.
SGRR #4 is the only old project I still have.
-Photograph by Kevin Parson
Now it is a personal treasure, and it lives in a display case.
-Kevin
This sounds like a good idea. I guess you mean you bought replacement short shafts after the gear broke, right? Or are you saying you immediately bought a spare of what’s already in the product new?
-Matt
Kevin, that’s at handsome unit. Looks like a lot of particular care went into it. Does it go?
-Matt