Autobus,
You're right of course, I woiuldn't want my kids tied down helping me when they could be out living. Still, between the roller coaster of life threatening problems, Medicare regs that prevent you from having a hospital room, even when you need one, even on private pay, and the lousy management at the nursing home, it often felt like dad and I were hunkered down in a bunker, just me and him, safe for right now but surrounded by a hostile world, and it really changed the way we related, for the better. He let his "I'm the dad" guard down and we were really connecting.
We lost mom about three years ago, so I understand the process, and where I'm at in that process right now. Losing family never goes quick and clean like the movies, and accepting that is part of the process. I'm ok now and will be ok when the acute part of the process is past too.
When weathering time comes around, I'll be lurking over at the hardcore weathering website, learning, practicing on scrap material, and the first locos weathered will be the tender drive dogs and Lifelike trainset duffers.
One thing I've never seen any weathering forum address is how sheet metal, even thick sheet metal used in older locomotives, sort of...shrinks...around it's supporting frame over time, letting you see that structure even outside the shell. Most models have a much greater shell thickness to shell area ratio than the prototypes, and it affects the eye's perception at almost subconcious levels when viewing models.
Not sure how to match that, yet, but the procedure for the unknown always begin with experimentation on less valuable stock. Rust, road grime, exhaust, fueling results, and blowdown artifacts seem pretty straightforward by comparison.
Since I'm committed to removable chalk powders for the most part, if I screw one up, a little running water brings it back to unweathered, ready for another try.
You're definitely right about how weathering brings out the detail. I've weathered 9quick and dirty) an OT MOW train, and a structure or two, and I like the weathered look much better than plain and shiny. I want to be careful though, a lot of OT layouts run equipment that looks a hundred years old, and it is, now, but it wasn't back when it was in use. Then it was new or middle aged and dirty, a big difference from ancient and dirty.
Tatans, my thoughts on weathering are as follows:
1. This is a multi-use layout, OT steam, specifically the Silverton Railroad, with removable struatures so as to double as a transition ATSF layout, with the added capability of at least displaying modern diesels for the kids who prefer those. Since Otto Mears, owner of the SRR, prided himself on providing sparkling clean motive power, even to the point of doffing his tie and jacket to perform routine MX himself, before re-donning his business wear for a power lunch, our non-weathered locomotives have at least SOME precedent in prototypical reality.
2. To preserve theoretical resale value, weathering will be non-permanent (chalks w/o fixing or Dullcote), and probably limited to that which would survive operational efforts at cleaning. In other words, the weathering on an ATSF F7 probably won't include the sides, where an automatic washer would get most of it, but more likely where the rack washers do not reach.
As you can see, my judgements are self serving, efficient, and practical. We're covered now, with no weathering in place, in the future, with light weathering in place, and in the probably impossible future, where the rolling stock needs to be resold and liquidated.
All is well.
:-)
Crandel,
My older sister gets to handle the wills and trusts. Knowing what's involved, I am committed to doing as much legwork to help her in this as is legally possible, since she's in another state and her professions doesn't allow much time off.
Since my younger brother is also in another state, responsibility for ordering the house falls mostly to me.
By reminding me of two things I already knew, but wasn't assigning enough priority to, you have untangled the complex knot for me. I know where I would prioritize my hobbies, if my son was handling things after I passed, and as my father's son, can reasonably extrapolate the same judgement for him.
You're right, he wouldn't want me stressing over this. He (I) also wouldn't want something important to us tossed in the trash by our children either. A happy medium is called for.
And "one day at a time" is the only way to handle any complex task (with a well thought out "big picture" priority list well in hand, of course).
A good portion of those days will have R and R time scheduled for me, and MR will be a part of that. Progress on ALL fronts will be measured in months, even years, not hours.
You are a wise man, probably have seen some of this yourself, and I appreciate your advice. Thank you.
That was a most cathartic and important post for you! It must still be a whirlwind, as if you are awakening to find yourself in that very tornado. A lot of emotion to wash away, although it will take some time...weeks. What you are feeling is normal, so don't fret...it's part of the "package", and you'll just have to let it wash over you as it wants to.
It may be best to just do what you can to get his affairs in some order that you can deal with. Are you the executor of an existing and valid will? You can start in small, manageable steps to deal with that. Enlist a trusted agent if the burden seems daunting at the moment.
As for the lost expertise, it is a sad fact with every passing that the onus of acquiring that knowledge falls on someone else, but happily there are many who are interested enough to do it. Find a club or society that deals with your Dad's hobbies and see if someone can steer you, when you are re-energized and organized to do it, to learning what it takes to do something honourable with your Dad's collections. If you adopt one (only, please) to perpetuate in his memory, you will find yourself learning about it just as he did, and as you did with this hobby. A page at a time.
It must have been a horrible experience to have had Nature extending such a frightening set of circumstances during the time when you wanted to focus on your Dad's immediate and urgent need. No one I know takes her for other than she is sometimes characterized...a canine of the female sex. She has made my life on the east coast of Vancouver Island unpleasant during early winter storms, but nothing like a tornado.
Any way, try to normalize your existence when and as you can...restore favourite parts of your daily life, enjoy the warmth of the sun, good food, clean sheets...life is meant to be great at times, and now sounds like a good time to reclaim yours. Your Dad would grab you by the shoulders and insist upon it. It's what he would do.
-Crandell
Crandel, not only was he a fighter, he was WINNING. That's the hard part. After the last hospital stay, it was all uphill for two-three weeks. Tuesday night, he said he felt the best he had since waking up. Wednesday morning, they called me around 0700 to say he had a fever, but he was normal through Thursday.
I got his house up to bare minimum functionality for wheelchair/walker access Friday around 5 pm.
From 6pm through 11 pm Friday, I was assisting a surgeon in placing a pick line for antibiotics, while watching the radar, counting the minutes till the tornado bearing storm reached our location. At the heigth of the storm, my sister, an MD, made the decision to transport him to the hospital, and that adventure included 18 inch floods atop the biggest street in the city, flying trees and pieces of trees, a three vehicle caravan, ambulance, me, sis, entire blocks of the electrical grid coming up and going down like in the movie Titanic when the ship's electrical system failed, and continuous lightning. Fortunately by that time, the tornado was already past. The hospital was a war zone, with caved in windows, and collapsed ceilings, plus hundreds of laundry baskets under leaks in the roof, but dad slept through all that.
Saturday noon, he stopped responding and he left us around 11 Saturday night.
The plan was for me to become his 24/7 aide, secretary, nurse, cook, admin assistant, driver, legs, eyes, etc. He was going to teach me to cut gemstones, and we were going to catalogue all his collections. He was PSYCHED about all this, as it had been years since he was able to read mail or journals, or to really pursue his interest, and having me around to see for him was a bright future compared to his recent past.
Yesterday, I was wandering through his house, stunned with the implications of the loss of his knowlege and expertise. Somehow I'm going to have to equal his expertise in the fields of coin collecting, stamp and postal card collection, glass bottle collection, fossil and gemstone collection, his genealogy database, his massive photo and slide and 8mm movie collection, just to begin to understand what is IN that house, or ELSE his life's work will be tossed to the wolves at auction. I NEED his mind and its gone.
We were SO CLOSE to coming home and the pendulum swung the other way and now all is at risk. Financially, he was in good shape, having retired from a major pharmaceutical firm with 40 US patents, but continuity-wise, the rest seems very tenuous right now.
I treasure the Mantua, but at the same time, I treasure everything he chose to collect, for the same reasons. While I was on that side of town, I picked up a pair of Roundhouse 2-8-0s with sound that had been ordered and arrived at the LHS, but I have no idea when I will be able to continue the layout here, or even get a chance to see them run, (excpet for the LHS testing session, mandatory for all locomotives).
While taking care of him, I was at maximum capacity, 12 hours shifts covering all mealtimes plus travel time to and from my house, plus overnights and multi-day marathons during crises, and that continued well after he passed due to getting in touch with all his old friends for the memorial service. Only in the last few days have I had time to reflect on losing him, and on the magnitude of what honor demands of me in the near future.
If there's any consolation, I can take as long as necessary to put things in order, and I think I'm just going to schedule some MR time during this transition period. I know it calms me to create, and I will probably need some calming influences while re-ordering my life. At this point, however, I'd be foolish to anticipate significant...progress...in MR.
I think the most I will be able to enjoy for the near future will be the process itself, not the results.
On reflection, I'm not sure that's such a bad thing. i've always believed that the BEST layout is the one that looks barely acceptible early on, yet offers the MOST opportunities for future creation and detailing. Since a finished layout loses at least half the fun of additional work, tear-out becomes inevitable, so the building stage of a layout is to be preserved, not raced through.
If so, maybe this will allow me to ENJOY my hobby more, during shorter periods, instead of "suffering' through rapid progress.
Maybe it's not the destination, but the journey itself.
Your post made me go up to my attic and break out an old Tom Mc Ann shoe box where I had stored one of these engines both in the Santa FE and Pennsylvania names. Incidentally both lines used the same engine #s, mine being 5314. I don`t remember when I bought them but it had to be well over 40 years ago and at the same time I bought 2 Mantua 2 8 2 I think Mikados ( not sure). I also bought a Mantua 0 6 0 Pennsylvania switcher at the same time. I was real gung ho back then to build up an engine fleet fast. Also bought 6 GP20`s on sale the day after christmas for $5 each. That should tell you how long ago it was. I have since lost track of all the GP20`s but I still have the 5 Mantua engines and have never had a layout to run them on so they are still in new shape but I will try them out at a local club tonight. These engines have survived 10 moves so I guess that puts me in a similiar class with you. You are dead on about the weight, these are real heavyweights. I dont plan on using any of these engines on my soon to be built layout because I`m not willing to spend over $100 on each engine to upgrade
Bob D
Bob D As long as you surface as many times as you dive you`ll be alive to read these posts.
Gosh, after all that he slipped anyway. That must be almost excruciating! He was a fighter to the last. I am sure he would have been proud of your perseverence with the engine since it was embodied in him.
Take care, and enjoy the engine as a memento of his passing. Sorry it was such a long, if valiant, struggle for you.
So...
Woke up yesterday, (seems like yestersay, actually it was end of March), cleaned house, getting ready to pick up the kids for their weekend visit. Stopped by dad's to say hi, he was facedown on the floor, been there two days.
ER>ICU>regular room> rehab facility>ICU>rehab facility, one 40 hour shift taking care of him, two 24s, lots of 18s, standard was 12, he fights off 5 life threatening situations in 8 weeks, all of a sudden he wakes up, starts eating, 5000 calories plus per day, he's racing me home and I can't get his home ready fast enough, three sessions of therapy a day, leg lifts in bed in between, and an infection pops up out of nowhere and takes him in three days.
Docs said he'd bust his gut, but he pulled a rabbit out his hat, went to sleep and passed quietly.
Got the loco rebuilt before he fell.
Guess I'll settle for that.
Dan,
Thanks for the yardbirds link, I'll check that out.
I hang on to boxes, like shoe boxes, for project storage, but with trays, you could leave everything spread out, and just work directly off the tray. Biggest issue here now is that there isn't room for a tray storage rack.
Dad is the one who bought my son his first train set. I would have, but later on, I could tell at the time he just didn't have the manual dexterity to enjoy the hobby, and I know better than to buy a set like that too. Still on the long list of things to do is to somehow rehabilitate a long string of Model Power Missile Force freight cars so they'll run well enough to satisfy my son. Talgo trucks, horn hooks, you know the drill. We have managed to zero the rocket launcher well enough to score center mass hits on the cats, one time in ten at ranges of 15 to 20 feet, with further development still pending.
Unfortunately, dad's vision is pretty much gone. He can see large objects, well enough to drive, but he can't ID me at ten feet in a resteraunt, or tell my son from my daughter at five feet unless they speak. He's seen the layout, sort of a last trip to my place since its risky for him to drive at night, but it's hard to enjoy something like model railroading when your vision is that bad. Being who he is and how he grew up, he's also about as sentimental as a rock. He cuts gemstones for his hobby, no idea how he manages that with his eyes so bad, but he does, and I treasure the ring he made for me, and the stones he's cut for my kids are in the safe with deeds and titles. That sentiment, and that related to the Pacific, is a one way street, and that's enough for me.
He's very much into the kids, and he likes that we enjoy railroading together, but it's not his hobby, and since he can't see the results well enough to tell the difference between a detailed Mantua and a Thomas the Tank engine, much of it is lost on him. I think with kids, you have some say in the future, but with parents, you take what you get. Although...I realized something writing this. He likes to pretend he didn't cry when mom passed, but we all saw the truth. You're probably right...the sentiment is in there, just not on the surface. Thanks for helping out with the eye opener. That's a good thing to know.
Jeffers,
In the event that you might be interested, Yardbird Trains has a Yahoo group that would probably enjoy hearing your story as well. I imagine that a few of the guys there are active here as well.
As to the cafeteria trays, not sure where you live, but I'm sure that there are food service stores that carry them. In our area, we have GFS; they have that kind of stuff in stock in most cases. I've also found that those dollar stores have smaller plastic boxes with lids... perfect for "projects" like box cars, smaller locos, etc.
Thanks a lot for sharing your story. It's just one more reason why model railroading is more than just playing with trains.
You mentioned your dad later in the narrative; what does he think of your efforts to rebuild the engine that he bought for you so many years ago? I imagine that is a source of pride for him as well. : )
dlm
Thanks for the kind words, everyone. That makes an enjoyable project even better.
I thought of a couple things people here might be interested in, if they're thinking about a similar project. One, even without the tender, this locomotive is very heavy. I had to separate the boiler from the chassis just to weigh it, because my postal scale only goes up to 1 pound 2 ounces. The boiler weighs 12 ounces and change, the chassis another nine and a fraction, for a total weight of 20.5 ounces. For comparison, a Spectrum 2-8-0 only weighs 12.5 ounces without its tender. I don't have enough cars on the layout right now to see how many the Pacific will pull without stalling, but since the Helix motor adds a reduction gear to the drive mechanism (yo Darth!), it ought to pull a boatload of cars behind it. The boiler, cylinders and chassis are all solid cast metal, and the only plastic parts are the cab shell and pilot. That's where all the weight comes from.
Two, the tender is the same length and width as the one from a BLI 2-10-4, but the Pacific's tender is taller. Inside that tender is a vast empty cavern, just waiting for a multi-driver speaker array, lots of electronics, or both. It's big and wide open. Being DCC challenged, our options are more limited, but the digital guys have room for a convention in there.
I've seen these locomotives at train shows going for $25, and if I remember right, online up to around $150, maybe more. $185 seems to ring a bell but don't quote me on that. The $25 one at the train show had all the correct pieces and looked to be in good shape. I wish I had bought it, now. I think a double headed set of these Pacifics would look really nice on our layout.
Loathar, Dan's detail kits come with about 40 pieces total, if you get the fireman's side pipe set too. The rest of the ones used here came from leftover wire, some other piping I had laying around, the front Kadee coupler assembly, and the inside cab detail. I have ideas for a couple more details that would look nice, but it's getting hard to handle now without risking breaking something off.
Twhite, One thing I wished I had during this project, actually during a lot of projects, is a set of school cafeteria trays, with sort of a shelved console to put them in. That way I could set a project aside while waiting for parts, work on something else for a while, and then pick up exactly where I left off. Maybe the cafeteria where Dad and the kids and I eat alternating Sundays would let me buy five or ten of them, I'll look into it next visit. The kids like these chocolate things that look just like potato chips and they come in plastic cups that stack and are a good size for small parts. I capture all of them as soon as the kids finish the contents, but that doesn't free up the workbench space for multiple projects while waiting for parts or funding.
Don, I did hoist a shot in your honor last night, but it was Patrone, not Beam. Jimmy took the back seat last night, and I'm paying for it today.
It's all your fault.
Great story, good looking loco! Did you mean you got a 75 piece detail kit from Dan? Do you have a link to that. I'd be interested in one. Are you happy with the way the HH motor runs? Good speed control? I need one for my Mikado.
http://toys.search.ebay.com/Mantua-Pacific_Model-RR-Trains_W0QQcatrefZC6QQdfspZ32QQfgtpZQQfposZQ5AIPQ2fPostalQQfromZR2QQfsooZ2QQfsopZ32QQftrtZ1QQftrvZ1QQlopgZQQsabfmtsZ1QQsacatZ479QQsadisZ200QQsaobfmtsZinsifQQsaprchiZQQsaprcloZQQsargnZQ2d1QQsaslcZ2QQsbrftogZ1QQsofocusZbs
There's still a lot of those old girls out there for sale.
Jeffers--
A standing ovation from this corner, too. What a GREAT story, and what a beauty of a loco you've ended up with because of time, patience and more importantly--AFFECTION. If I wore a hat, I'd take it off to you, my friend.
Your post couldn't have happened at a better time for me--I just got back from the Roseville MR show with an old brass Akane 2-8-8-4 that needs not only tweaking, it needs to be REBUILT. It's on my kitchen table right now in about 40+ pieces, all of which need serious recuscitation. You've given me more inspiration than I need--if you can do that to your old Mantua Pacific, then by golly I can get to work on my new old Akane Yellowstone.
Thanks again--that is one BEAUTIFUL loco you ended up with.
Tom
Tom View my layout photos! http://s299.photobucket.com/albums/mm310/TWhite-014/Rio%20Grande%20Yuba%20River%20Sub One can NEVER have too many Articulateds!
MZJ:
Good article. Thanks for sharing.
(I may live to regret this, but) You're not ALL bad. I may even buy a bottle of 'BEAM' to celebrate.
Very nice work!! I think it's always fun and exciting to get an old and nearly forgotten piece of equipment looking and running well again, like I did recently with an old pre-war American Flyer steam engine.
Those Mantua/Tyco steamers can be pretty nice when they're fixed up right. I have an old Mantua 0-6-0 Big Six that used to have all sorts of paint chipping, bent-up Kadees, and a really stiff drive, and now it looks pretty good and runs well, but it's way too fast. I heard that putting a 1/2" cube magnet made of neodymium in the back of those old open-frame motors will slow them way down, increase the power and improve speed control. I may have to try that sometime, and see how well it works.
_________________________________________________________________
I run diesels, so I wouldn't need to rebuild a steam engine, but great story. Good looking loco as the end result. This is what the forums are for, guys talking about what they've done for their layout recently or over the years. The closest I've personnaly come to rebuilding a loco is when i tried, and halfway succeded, in fixing a bust wire on an old Life-Like GP38-2. I wound up taking a truck from another busted loco of the same kind and attaching the wires with PAINTER'S tape.
Can't find the pic.
Sawyer Berry
Clemson University c/o 2018
Building a protolanced industrial park layout
Simon Modelling CB&Q and Wabash See my slowly evolving layout on my picturetrail site http://www.picturetrail.com/simontrains and our videos at http://www.youtube.com/user/MrCrispybake?feature=mhum
Well, ok, not exactly new...in fact, it's actually somewhere between 34 and 38 years old, as near as I can remember.
In the early 1970s, I was in my early teens, had an L-shaped 4x12/4x4 HO layout, and very little money for equipment. There was a very old AHM C liner, an AHM switcher, and a Tyco GP-20 for motive power, and that was the end of my railroad empire's locomotive roster.
Somewhere between 1970 and 1974, dad bought me another locomotive , for my birthday, Christmas, or just because he was my dad, and I picked out a very nice looking Mantua Pacific. If memory serves, it was a pretty expensive locomotive at the time, going for around $25.
The open frame motor didn't run very smooth, and there was no-where near the detail today's models offer, but once she built up a good head of steam, she pulled well, and hauled many a long string of freight cars around my layout, to my everlasting delight.
Unfortunately, it wasn't too many months before the headlight burned out, and that is where this story begins.
At ten years old, my mechanical, electrical, and woodworking skills were less than exceptional, and the tools my dad kept in his workshop were both off limits to kids, and definitely not well suited to model railroading.
That wasn't the obstacle it might seem, as he had to go to work everyday, and was therefore unable to establish 24 hour tool security. It was a simple matter to disassemble the locomotive, and a few cents for a replacement bulb was within my operations budget, but the soldered wire connection at the bulb housing was fragile and soon broken. Not long after that, the wire to the bulb had somehow come unsoldered on the other end too, where it was originally connected to one of the open frame motor brushes.
I have no idea what dad's soldering iron was designed for, but it wasn't designed for soldering delicate electronics. With a tip as big as my 45+ year old thumb is now, you could burn a half inch diameter hole through solid steel with this thing, and that's roughly what I proceeded to do. I think what happened is that I melted so much wire while soldering the bulb housing back on, that the wire was then too short to reach the headlamp mount, and then, if memory serves, I was unable to get the new wire, and the pickup wire to both stay soldered to the motor brush at the same time, not, at least, with dad's pilfered soldering brick.
As I grew older, my skills improved, but the usual suspects began to intrude on my priority list, girls, cars, job, sports, etc. Eventually all the train equipment salvaged when the layout was taken apart was packed into the box it was in when I got it, a stout cardboard packing crate for Florida Seminole Oranges, with a mailing address for some neighbors we had prior to 1964. I've asked dad about where that train stuff originally came from and he doesn't know, but I suspect our neighbor's son grew out of it and his mom gave it to my mom, who saved it until we were old enough to become interested. Mom's passed now, so this will remain theory.
In any event, that Seminole box, marked "Train Supplies" in black magic marker, survived countless moves on my part, always finding a place in my new homes and apartments, and somehow avoiding destruction or disappearance like so many of my other boxes and crates did during moves.
Fast forward to fall of 2005, and my 11 year old son received a train set for his birthday, which he naturally wanted to set up and run. Out came my sawhorses, out came a 4x4 foot piece of plywood we used under the Christmas tree, and pretty soon we had an oval set up and derailing trains, since the track wasn't nailed down to the wood. Somewhere along the line, we came up a part or wire short, and out came the Train Supplies box I had packed away more than three decades earlier.
Scattered throughout the box, completely disassembled, were the major pieces of my earlier pride of the fleet, the Mantua Pacific. This once proud locomotive was in bad shape, paint all chipped, none, not one of the assembly screws to be found, no tender shell and only one tender truck, no wiring, and worst of all, the motor only had one brush remaining in place. If that wasn't bad enough, the steam cylinders were missing too.
But somehow, the memory of what that locomotive had meant to me when I was younger, and what it looked like with the valve gear working hard to pull freight cars along the track made me wish I could rebuild it, finishing the job I had started more than 30 years previously. My son really wanted to see it run too as his new locomotive was a diesel. Not too long later, someone here at this forum pointed me towards Yardbord Trains, where they stock parts for old Mantuas, and the project was begun.
Dan wasn't able to sell me a motor brush, but he did have a spare motor from an old Pacific, and he also had the cylinder casting. All together, about $40 bought me a set of screws, the motor, the cylinders, and a very decrepit looking dusty plastic tender in ATSF livery that screamed "toy train" at injury decibel levels.
Once the parts arrived, and once I got back around to the project, the motor went in very easily, but almost immediately, I noticed that both brushes were all but hammered, almost no carbon knob left. The one brush from the old motor was in pristine condition, but once again, I was still one brush short.
Several months passed by, and somehow I found myself back at the Yardbirds site, and noticed I could buy a modern can motor, specifically designed to drop into the Mantua Pacific, a beast with new gearing and two massive flywheels called the Helix Humper. $50 and a week later, I was the proud owner of said Humper, along with an engineer, a fireman, and a detail kit for the Pacific.
By now, our layout was past design and well into construction, with jobs lined up extending through the forseeable future, and once again the Pacific got put on hold. Not in the box, however, the parts were neatly arrayed on my workbench, out of the way but not out of sight or out of mind. Generally, the spring, summer and fall are reserved for outdoor work, when gardening and yard work allow. I like to get my benchwork and painting done when I can get outside, because it's much simpler when I don't have to worry about dust or overspray inside the house. That leaves winter time for inside work, wiring on the layout, model building and detailing. This winter, the Pacific was at the top of my priority list. If nothing else, I wanted to reclaim my workbench space.
Testing the new parts, I found that the steam cylinders didn't fit tight to the boiler like they should, I didn't have the wiring harness or headlamp socket, no bulbs, and the Yardboirds site had another detail kit I hadn't ordered yet, so another $40 and one week later, I had still more parts for the growing collection. One final order, for $6, bought me the front truck bushing and two truck springs, and by this time, I had pretty much run out of available parts, having already ordered and taken delivery of just about every item listed on Dan's website. With $126 invested in just new parts, it was time to stop shopping and start building.
The Helix Humper went in in about ten seconds. One screw loosed the old motor, and that same screw secured the Humper in place. Heh...ten second re-motor and re-gear job, oh yeah, I'm bad.
The detail work took quite a bit more time, but was pleasant and without real hassle. There's something good about sitting in your nice warm workshop with an Opti-visor on and enough light to melt steel on your workbench, while a winter blizzard rages just outside your picture windows, and this project lived up to expectations. Of course, the furnace had to act up, and there were times when the workshop wasn't as warm as normal, but by and by, the details were in place, some 75+ individual parts, and it was time to paint.
Not many midwest winters include a 60 degree stretch in January, but this year did, and I laid two coats of Wal-mart dollar a can black spray on my boiler, cab, tender shell pilot and cylinders, outside, and was back in before the sub-zero normal winter weather returned.
In reassembling the valve gear, I used a little too much pressure fitting the left side into place and managed to break the plastic crosshead slider, to the point where I was sure it wouldn't stand up to active service. Once again Yardbirds had the parts and the tools, and my fears over working with rivets too small for my ancient eyes to even see proved groundless, the left side valve gear was replaced and reassembled in less than two days.
The only obstacle left was the cab. I wanted a full cab interior for this locomotive, and Yardbirds does not have any in stock, and they aren't being made anymore. I had some leftover brass wire and other odds and ends, so I decided to scratchbuild an interior.
I had some thick soft plastic dividers for a fishing tackle box, and cut a U shaped piece for the boiler backhead, a rectangular piece for the cab floor, and a small oval piece for the firebox door. The cab floor was easily superglued to the bottom of the boiler frame. The firebox door and two pieces of horizontal angle iron (styrene) went on the backhead. Three brass wires between the angle irons on the left, one complex brass wire steam pipe on the right, a small wire for the firebox door latch, and I was ready for gauges and valves. After poking around my spare parts box and coming up dry, I hit on the idea of using sewing pins for valves and gauges, and rounded up an assortment. That went smooth, painting the cab black and detail painting the instruments went smooth and assembling the finished cab onto the boiler went smooth.
I decided to glue the fireman and engineer to the cab housing, rather than the seats in the cab, because I wanted their arms out the window, and that would impede cab housing removal for service. That went smooth as well.
Final assembly, decals, and run-in all also went smoothly, and after a mere thirty eight years, AT&SF 3450 has completed its refit and is back in service.
During the early project work, I had done a lot of research into Santa Fe's Pacific roster, and realized that the Mantua model was not really accurate for early, middle or late Pacifics, more of a generic model than a specific one. The domes make it clear this is a later Pacific but there are still issues. Primarily, the walkways were wrong, and this model has a solid cast boiler, so changing out the walkways would have been a significant job. I thought about it, and in the end, decided that what I liked about the model 35 years ago was still true, it had clean lines and I decided to keep them, accurate or not.
For this reason, and because the decals I had limited my choices, I decided to number the locomotive 3450. The ATSF roster I was using at the time said that 3449 was the last SF Pacific in use, making 3450 an obvious anomaly, and therefore not subject to accuracy standards. After the decals were set, another roster not only showed a Pacific in use on the SF line numbered 3450, it had actual photographs, so I can only say that this 3450 is not the same 3450 that Santa Fe actually ran.
Speaking of running, the new Mantua Pacific, or better put, the rebuilt Mantua Pacific, with the Helix Humper, runs smooth as glass. Slow speed crawl or high speed highball, it's quiet and silky. I like the silver valve gear, because it's complex and easy to see during operation. I'll probably darken it some when it's time to weather the fleets, but for now it looks good as is.
I also like the way the Walmart dollar a can flat black spray went on. Unlike some other sprays, it has this texture that looks like a real steam locomotive, which has been painted with very thick paint, numerous times, even though the Walmart spray went on thin, smooth and did not cover up any details.
It's not new, but I expect long service from ATSF 3450, with all new parts on the refit, it better run for a while. This was a very satisfying project in and of itself. No real hassles, no tension, because the details fit as advertised and the process was very smooth. In addition, I get to close a 38 year old book and finish what I started decades ago, and have a very nice locomotive that my dad gave to me when I was a boy back in service, to boot.
The headlight finally works again, too.