Just wanted to share some work I’ve been doing to this old 4-4-0. It was barely running when I got it and missing some detail parts. I decided since I wanted to have a beautiful 4-4-0 without having to dump $300 on a new toy looking one, I would go the stupid route and use this one lol. Here is the drivetrain so far. I designed a new motor mount for a 8mm coreless along with a new hex cup for the 1mm shaft. I botched everything back together for testing and it runs great, even without lube and weights! If anyone is interested in this project I will update it here as I go. I guess new users can only add one pic…odd.
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Welcome to the forum! I’m sure many of us will be interested.
Simon
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Welcome aboard! 
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Welcome aboard, and I’d be VERY interested to see how the project turns out!
What size are you working with, HO or OO?
Oh, and don’t worry about the one-photo post limit, once the monitors know you’re one of the good guys the limit will come off. You may have noticed a time delay to your post showing, that’ll lift as well.
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I have seen the driveshafts between engine and tender made with thin wire, almost invisible beneath cab apron and tender deck.
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I have seen that…I have been kicking around the idea of a thin clear acrylic rod threaded for a 5mm nut on each end. I printed one for a Bowker in clear filament once…it was only okay lol.
I have seen heavy monofilament (as used for deep-sea fishing) used. Getting the result balanced might require ‘poising’ on knife edges, as for watch balances, as even a little ‘set’ in the filament as coiled might show imbalance.
I wouldn’t think anything reliably thin made of PLA or other filament would be strong in torsion or easy to balance with ‘subtractive machining’…
The key is to get the visible length of shaft as fine as possible, and make it as un-noticeable as possible – that may involve painting it a color other than black, or even ‘dazzle-painting’ along the length to break up the straight visual line.
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Working on these detail pieces while waiting for some parts to arrive. The metallic coating had pretty much flaked off and they looked haggard. I found some halfway decent metallic paint pens and have been playing around with them. A little top coat of some gloss nuln oil from Citadel and I think these parts look pretty good. I may give them a little dry brush with Retributor Armour which is kind of like a brassy gold from Citadel.
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Thanks!
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Shaping the weight to resemble a cab. I only have my filament printer set up since we moved to our new house, but soon I’ll set up my resin printers and make a firebox door and other details. I already have a flicker circuit with nano chip LEDs from Evan Designs. The Digitrax I ordered was a touch too big so I’ve ordered another thats suitable for N and HO…I’ll just stick this one in another locomotive 
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Still waiting on my smaller decoder so I decided to do something with the brown blob wood load that seems common on these trains…what do you think? Also tuned my airbrush a bit and greyed out the smoke box but decided its too cold to do the boiler or tender at the moment. My working marker lights from Tomar Industries came and these suckers are going to be fun
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Looking good! 
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Fantastic job on the wood load in the tender! VERY realistic!
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Thank you for the kind words, turns out painting HO details is very similar to Warhammer 40K figures They both require a big magnifying glass, lots of light and steadier hands than mine!
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My Cal-Scale whistle just showed up, the origanal plastic one was broken off. Also got some finishing work done on the headlamp that I drilled for a pico size chip LED.
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We love step-by-step!
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Have you thought about making a parabolic reflector for the back of that headlamp? It would be simple the way you’ve drilled it out, and add realism when the LED is off…
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Great idea, I’m sure I have something laying around that would fit the bill! Thanks
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