Royal Blue Rebuild

[Mononflyer]

Hey All,

 

I am in the middle of rebuilding my Uncle's Royal Blue engine that has had a very hard life.  I decided to put a smoke unit in it and a can motor with an electronic reverse unit.

 

Everything is working well, but as you probably suspect, the smoke unit chimney and the smokestack on the engine shell do not match up.  Rather than try and rug up some type of curved tube, I thought of modifying the unit by drilling a hole further back from the regular hole and seeing if that works.

 

What do you guys think? Will this work, or will it mess up the smoke unit operation?  I have attached a photo of where I'd like to drill the new smokstack in the smoke unit.

 

[Sturgeon-Phish]

Mononflyer

Drilling the hole further back may work. I did the same thing that you are doing and it works pretty well as the smoke finds it's way out the top. You may want to try it and see if you are satisfied. If moving the hole back works I may try that

Jim

 

[Major]

Drilling a hole further back will work. I have a balston loco works conversion of the Atlas Pennsy Atlantic to S-scale. They drilled the hole further back and the smoke unit works just fine. You will however have to plug the front hole with something like J-B weld for it to work properly.

[RedfireS197]

I will have to try this with a Royal Blue that I converted.  My aquarium tubing wasn't an ideal solution.

[Mononflyer]

Thanks for your responses.  This will really help.  Time for me to get drilling.

I'll post some photos on my progress.  I'm almost ready to paint.  I filled in the reverse unit slot on the boiler and now i am going to fill in a couple of casting errors

[sir james I]

The Royal Blue is a favorite of mine. I never did understand why Gilbert didn't modify it for smoke and chuff.

[Mononflyer]

Mine too.  Why they didn't put together postwar passenger sets I'll never know.  I'm also thinking about getting some old New Haven passenger cars and repainting them to the Royal Blue scheme.

[Mononflyer]

Does Krylon make a paint that is close for the Royal Blue?

[Sturgeon-Phish]

That is what I used on the 350 in the picture above, then dry transfers for the lettering.

I may drill the smoke unit on mine.

Jim

[Mononflyer]

Once I get the smoke unit working, I'll let you know how it works out.