Large Scale Central

Challenge Accepted - Large Scale Fantasy Locomotive

OK,

The ho’oilo (rainy season) is nigh, and it is time to go from the garden to the lanai as the frigid 70-degree weather descends upon O’ahu…

Seriously, after “Rooster” offered the requisite detail parts to resurrect a shattered LGB M2075 shell my kids named “Little Thomas,” I ran out of excuses to put off an effort to turn this:

Into a side tank approximation of this (photo courtesy of “Rooster” from an overview of the Oahu Sugar Co.):

I had hashed this idea around privately previously with Bill Barnwell and on the GR site, and the advice at the time was “Neat project, but not now” as dollars were better spent on tools and basic things to get the Triple O running.

OK, so why this locomotive? It is for strictly sentimental reasons. “He” was a Christmas gift in 1976 from my late grandmother, and “he” did hard service until about 1980 when the battery motor died. At that time, my brother and I got our first proper LGB sets, and this old fellow served as our hand operated “switcher” until the collection went into storage for a quarter century. When the Triple O came into being, the newly christened “Little Thomas” found service in checking clearances, and he now serves as the “Kid-zilla Sponge” along with some HLW minis. A big theme of the Triple O is connecting past to present, and if I can get the kids involved in bringing “Little Thomas” back to life as a functioning locomotive, it’ll be a neat way to tie together four generations (Dad played with him, too, back in the day!) in one project. Even better, the last of our Nisei grew up on the cane fields here, and if “Little Thomas” can come back as something evocative of that era, that would help “him” serve as a binding agent between two families. All pretty cool stuff, if not horrifically applicable to making this work beyond providing motivation.

Now for the reality. This thing is a shell. There are no interior parts. Its hull won’t hold an LGB can motor, so it has to use a powered tender, or I have to fit it on something else. To boot, the rod is broken, but I am amenable to putting sideboards on the old boy to make it look like a partial tram conversion. “Rooster” graciously opened his parts bin to me for bells, lights, and the like. I figure the hard part is making something evocative of a boiler backhead. Add to this I am still learning the language of steam locomotives (They don’t have condensers like ships? My bad…), so I am not even sure what I should stick back on!

On the other hand, I have a few aces in my sleeve. For one,the plantations used a variety of locomotives in every conceivable wheel configuration, so everything is fair game. There are even examples of tram engines out here, so putting sideboards on to hide the missing rods is a possibility. The plantations threw away nothing, and they used them and reused them for as long as they could, with Hawaii’s earliest locomotives having run almost until the end of railroad operations on the plantations. I figure that gives me license to be accurate to the spirit of the era and its iron horses if not accurate to an exact plantation or prototype. More practically, I do have a good hardware store and a plastic model focused hobby store in town, and an R/C aircraft focused hobby store near my office (Both are the last of their kinds, out here). My only practical limitations are that I minimize shipping and that the project not be detailed beyond the point the family cannot become involved with its restoration (part of my anti-computer game crusade).

That has been enough “butt modeling” for tonight. I’ll throw up some other pictures as the week goes on to frame the issue a bit.

Thanks for letting me bend your ear!

Eric

Eric Mueller said:

Thanks for letting me bend your ear!

Eric

Your welcome!..(https://www.largescalecentral.com/externals/tinymce/plugins/emoticons/img/smiley-wink.gif)

OK,

To make up for last night’s diarrhea of the keyboard, tonight I will simply post a couple photos to frame the engineering challenge. You can see the chassis is pretty narrow, limiting what can go in there. The busted LGB motor helps show the limitations:

That space constraint was why I was considering using the remaining lead shot in a soft dive weight (nothing like unknowing shedding lead at depth on SCUBA!) as ballast fore and aft and bringing power from a tender. The rods bedevil me as an issue, so, as a crude guide, I would ask you pretend the HLW “mini” astern of the old boy is a tender and the cardstock is the sideboards.

Powered tenders are “doable” with sufficient begging to CINCHOUSE.

The other options I have weighed is marrying the loco frame to a new chassis, stretching it to put in a bigger coal bunker if required to make it an 0-[whatever]-0T. This will make for a different series of modeling challenges, but it would allow for me to put proper rods on “him” again.

Looking at photos in my books, lights and bells can go wherever there is space. There are lots of examples with cool wooden bumpers and plank walkways running fore to aft alongside and on top of the plantation locos. This means where to put this stuff is not an issue. The question is, rather, “What is some of this stuff?” I’ll post some more framing questions and photos later this week.

Thanks as always!

Eric

Forgot to mention, Bill B. suggested battery Tamiya motors. Not sure if they will fit, but they would be a good, cheap solution, too, and provide and excuse to build a mini box car to house the batteries!

https://www.pololu.com/product/69I’ve been looking at this Tamiya motor for my rail truck;

The worm drive provides a brake when stopped.

Should fit fine, control may be an issue, I may go on/off with a magnetic switch.

https://www.pololu.com/product/69

Worst part of kitbashing today is finding acceptable motor blocks, either they cost a fortune or they don’t exist anymore. Maybe consider a Mack motor block under the engine shell, can’t really add siderods to it but at least it will get you going.

Note the ankle band which limits me. Already seeing good suggestions with this thread!

https://www.robotshop.com/en/low-cost-gears-motors.html

http://www.robotmarketplace.com/

Fun links and ideas…

(http://www.largescalecentral.com/profile/1640)

Todd, Please change your youtube url to https

Only you see it.

Gents,

Lots of good ideas! I did some eBay searching, too, on motor blocks and powered tenders. Vic Smith speaks truth! I have to weigh some options, which is nice, actuallr. Tonight’s a bit busy, so tomorrow, I’ll get some photos up for my “What the heck is missing and do I need it?” series as part of my steam plants ashore for dummies effort.

Eric

John Caughey said:

Todd, Please change your youtube url to https

Only you see it.

The url does say https when it posts.

Here is the url I’m using and just posting it using the “film” icon above.

https://youtu.be/xki4tWcsSK0

Maybe I sould use the “link” icon?

https://youtu.be/xki4tWcsSK0

Guess not that way either.

Todd this is the embed code;

After you open the movie icon box you must click on ‘embed’ to open a box big enuf for the code.

When you paste the above in the box you get vid.

Test at 11

Extra credit for naming the movie stars shown briefly in the super chicken video.

I saw Frankenstein, and I think douglas fairbanks…

Greg

All this “Super Chicken” pertains to the “original poster” how ?

Eric,

The answers will surely come. However freelancing is just as hard as modeling prototypes unless you have decided what you really want! Slapping stuff on stuff doesn’t work unless you know what you want or how it works. I understand what your are thinking but you need to think more.

What I do see consistently with the prototypes is they shave off the oval cab eyebrows . Thought for sure the west coast guys would pick up on shaving eyebrows not focusing on chickens. But things on the west coast move faster than on the east coast except for the sun. Hell they even mistake Judy Garland for Shirley Temple anymore WTF !

I’m still following and my parts bin is still open but I’m only shipping free once as to what you decide on!

Hoping some of the more experienced guys will chime in …Doc Tom and just Doc ?

" Rooster " said:

All this “Super Chicken” pertains to the “original poster” how ?

Thanks Rooster, YOU complaining about thread drift… I needed a good laugh.

Since side rods are a bug a boo, I think you should take a geared loco tack …

Simplify what is seen and and let the curious ask. A center hub drives a chain over the axle.