I know these little buggers are kinda too cutesy for the more ‘serious’ modelers here and there, but they do have a lot of potential and they certainly do have charm.
I’ve gotten busy with other stuff of late, and quite frankly didn’t want to bother with bashing the pistons and cylinders like I did with the Bumble Bee version of this engine, so I decided to try something different, an inside frame version of the typical mining engine, like a Bell Locomotive was constructed.
Looks like a bog standard LBH but…
New smokestack, scratched bell and mounting, repainted parts of the body
Popped off the dummy cylinders, re-cut and positioned them under the fore-frame.
Got around to adding to siderods to my LBH saddletanker:
I have to admit it really does make this look better, just a pair of standard Big Hauler pistons with
the tangs cut down, thats the hard part as the tang both narrower and thinner, a dremel tool is most
definetly required for this, also cutting down the pushrods and adding screws to the wheel pivots
just like the Bumble Bee bash. I really hope Bmann adds full siderods to these one day.
I am very impressed with the drives, they are very smooth,very quiet, and so far, reliable. I dont overtax them by expecting them to pull 12 full size cars, they only pull a few of my 2 axle HLW (w/ BB wheels) cars at any time. the only thing I could say needed improvement was adding some extra weight to the engine as they are a bit light, but this should be done cautiously as no one really knows at this point how much weight will cause damage, I plan to add some self-adhesive tire weights to give it some extra traction but as-is they are quite successfully able to pull my 3 Lil Hauler passenger cars (also BB wheel equipped) around my 3’ round pizza layout.
No, not at this time, I plan to add Stephenson style rods this winter. Eventually I will add something similar to the valverods I added to an early Big Hauler;
