Old Cary Locomotive Works DS-4-4-10 project

Model Railroader General Discussion (Model Railroader)
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I dug out of storage an old project that I started probably 25 years ago. It’s a Baldwin switcher using a Cary body casting and an Athearn (obviously Blue Box) S-12 chassis. It’s raised a few questions!

  • Is there an instruction sheet somewhere on the Internet? Bowser doesn’t have it, and a Google search doesn’t seem to turn one up either. This doesn’t seem like rocket science, but…
  • I discover that I had cut the frame apart, into a number of pieces. It appears that the Baldwin DS-4-4-10 must have a longer wheelbase than the S-12 donor. I cut the frame around the motor mount, apparently to move the trucks toward the ends of the new body. But I have NO IDEA what I needed to do, since that was done 25 years ago, with no instructions and of course I cannot possibly remember just what I was thinking…
  • I did some Googling and found that the wheelbase of the DS-4-4-10 was in fact 3’ longer than the S-12 donor chassis, at least in the prototype. This isn’t the biggest error, and I would guess in 2012 that back in the 1980s (or in the 70s, the likely origin of the Cary casting, or the 60s, the origin of the S-12 model), three feet would be overlooked.
  • Measuring the actual Cary shell shows that it’s 45’ long, generally consistent with the idea that the DS-4-4-10 is 48’ 10" over the pulling faces, as some Internet data reports.
  • What probably is odd is that there are no extensions for the drive train, which obviously must be required if in fact the chassis needs to be longer. Ordinarily I would get all of the pieces for a project like this as I start it, so either I hadn’t figured out what to do or the drive train components were not available. (Perhaps that’s why I shelved it?) Does this conversion require chassis extension?

If I can’t work out what to do with the old Athearn chassis, what options do I have? Are the Hobbytown ones still available? Protopower West seems like a pretty expensive option. I

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I have never seen a BLW DS-4-4-100 shell by Cary. I remember the Alco S-2 shell, the EMD SW1500 shell, and maybe an FM H-12-44. I looked at HOSEEKER, but did not find anything close.

Hobbytown of Boston was sold many years ago. A new company(Bear Locomotive ???) upgraded the wheels to n/s, and then appear to have gone out of business.

To be quite honest, I would cut my losses and just get the Stewart/Bowser BLW DS-4-4-1000. The drive is better than anything you have(even a Hobbytown). It has n/s wheels, all rail pickup, and is all in one package.

I have an old Mantua ‘General’ and a Cary ‘Richmond’ boiler kit buried somewhere. It is sort of one of those ‘sentamental’ things - But it has brass tender wheels, is too light, has poor electrical pickup, and I an not sure where I could even mount a DCC decoder… If I get around to it, I will get it assembled, painted, and ‘stuffed & mounted’ for display(unless someone wants to buy it a the next train show I have a table at).

Jim