Welcome Nick. That loco looks great - a huge improvement. I was never a fan of the Aristo Rogers, but you have turned it into a great looking little loco.
Jon Radder said:
Welcome Nick. That loco looks great - a huge improvement. I was never a fan of the Aristo Rogers, but you have turned it into a great looking little loco.
Thank you, and thanks again to all others, I am continuously surprised and pleased by the appreciation for this model. I always liked the general proportions of the locomotive from my few glimpses of them in the wild, but the slopeback tender and a variety of bits and bobs and the mismatched-color smokebox (yes it happened on a spare few railroads but not many) always seemed like odd choices to me as far as the factory design. A bunker version would be neat, and one without the saddle tank and a tender would also be cool since 2-4-2s are rare as it is.
I used to not think much of Aristocraft motive power due to limited experiences with it, but this thing with two motors is a brute. I never knew Aristocraft did a modular chassis before buying this one. Pleasant surprises abound, it seems.
Very, very nicely done, Nick… Looks wonderful… (http://www.largescalecentral.com/externals/tinymce/plugins/emoticons/img/smiley-cool.gif)(http://www.largescalecentral.com/externals/tinymce/plugins/emoticons/img/smiley-laughing.gif)(http://www.largescalecentral.com/externals/tinymce/plugins/emoticons/img/smiley-laughing.gif)(http://www.largescalecentral.com/externals/tinymce/plugins/emoticons/img/smiley-cool.gif)
Excellent conversion Nick.
Beautiful work Nick! 
Greetings all, and many thanks for the continued praise. As of very recently I have installed a Phoenix PB17 sound board into the 2 axle LBH tender for the 2-4-2, paired with a 2" Visaton speaker, both from Mike & Renee of Reindeer Pass.
The speaker is full range and plentifully potent for the application, and is screwed down on two of the mounting ears to the chassis plate. The card is stuck onto double-sided tape on a wood block I glued into the back wall of the tender shell, up out of the way of the battery and away from the speaker’s magnet.
The tender picks up power from two LGB ball bearing axles, and is linked to the locomotive’s trailing axle with two wires that double as faux injector pipes. This gives the PB17 a pickup footprint of at least three axles, and in conjunction with the 3.6v battery means nary a stutter or loss of power at any point of operation.
Creative drilling of holes large and small on the center of the curiously well-detailed underside of the LBH tender was done, and allow the speaker within to be plentifully loud. Also visible are the whistle and bell reeds, glued to the rectangular plastic housing of the front BB axle, and braced between with a length of scrap plastic, as well as the volume switch, all of which are almost entirely out of sight from above and the side.
Also for those that have spoken of my gigantic filesize images, these in this post are 800 x 600 pixels as requested.