So will the locomotive design be like this;
1.
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Or this;
2.
Or maybe this:
3.
Please pick one the designs above so we know what your locomotive will look like. I want to help in any way I can.
How do you plan to rewire everything? Will it be DC or DCC?
And what kind of paint scheme will be used for these locomotives?
Have you started yet?
This seems to be an effort of dreams and wishes, which is fine...
But to the OP, you're doing yourself a disservice because you're essentially taking the advice and replies of the many and ignoring the wisdom offered.
"Many" is not 5 or 6, unless you're talking about ownership of a Rolls Royce or Lamborghini.
You need to crawl before you walk, and walk before you run. This project for you is akin to going from the womb to flying mach 3.
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I am writing this to the op not as a discouragement but as a advice on the project,. As I have notice earlier you mentioned cost could be an issue. I highly suggest you reevaluated the cost of this project. Ho scale electric locomotives are not cheap as they are rare (even more then certain steam (exclude the GG1)). The fact that you might need to chopped up a Bi polar ( which finding a ho non brass one is rare) that ho is kind of a waste if I may say. Also the skill required to create a custom chassis to mount all the motor and drive train is going take considerable time and money ( these things are never plug and play) ( try modifing a late 90's rivarossi 4 6 2 that not dcc ready you see what I mean and that comes with can motor aready). Now if you really want a good challenge and still do some customize work on a locomotive I suggest you start with the old Bowser steam locomotive kits (most come with super details set) or the Old roundhouse steam locomotive kit. These will give a good basic skill on how to proceed in custom locomotive work. And for a challenge in building railway cars look for branchline trains blueprint series heavyweight cars.
Right now there are Athearn Trainmaster dummy engines on Ebay for $10 or less. The kitbash article is in the December 1986 issue of Model Railroader.Go nuts.
Disclaimer: This post may contain humor, sarcasm, and/or flatulence.
Michael Mornard
Bringing the North Woods to South Dakota!
“Why pray tell do you suggest I quit???”
mobilman44A word of friendly, constructive advice for the OP........ Actually, that is what you have already been given on your various threads. The folks here are thrilled to see a young person interested in the hobby and obviously have gone out of their way to encourage you - or to point out pitfalls in your many plans. I urge you to pay attention to them and value it accordingly. The thing about doing a project - whatever it is - is to start out in "beginner" stages and work your way to bigger and more difficult projects as your skills and experience and wallet dictate. Those of us that have been around for awhile have seen others come into the Forum with skyhigh aspirations, and they solicit advice and opinions on their proposed works. But then, after the verbiage wears thin, they run off........ Lets hope that won't be the case with you, for the hobby can really use some young, fresh, and ambitious blood...........
Steven, I suggest that you not only reread Mobilman44 again but take some time and seriously contemplate his excellent words of observation and wisdom.
I’m all for diving into a project headfirst, yes, I do some research, but for me, it’s a case of “if he can do it so can I”, basically “lets suck it and see”!!!
However, if I get it wrong or over estimate my abilities, I, at least, have the luxury of putting the “stalled” project to one side, and getting on with another.
I fear that as a young chap with your limited budget, that when you hit the wall, you will find that you’ve over capitalised on a not that wisely thought out project, and then lose interest in the hobby, which would be sad thing.
How about “cutting your teeth” on something like either purchasing an Athearn Blue Box GP9, replace the cast on grab irons, lift rings etc, or a Cary Alco S4 shell and an Athearn SW7 chassis, and then detail either/ or to the Southern Pacific prototype, finally lettering it for your railroad.
Either project should provide you with hours of entertainment (?) and practise to further expand your skills.
Cheers, the Bear.
"One difference between pessimists and optimists is that while pessimists are more often right, optimists have far more fun."
Perhaps start with something a bit simpler as a kitbash project. There are numerous articles over the years in MR and other magazine about combining multiple Athearn car kits, or modifying existing cars, or maybe kitbash a version of a loco not readily available by taking parts from multiple body shells - get some experience at all this.
I'm NOT saying give up, but I think I'd be hard pressed to pull off that monster loco and I've been doing this for over 40 years. The mechnical part I think I would get - I will also point out that the gearboxes, universals, and drive shafts needed to rig up a custome drive line like that loco would need are not exactly 'cheap'. Available - yes, you cna build pretty much anything with the parts NWSL sells.
I had many kits, both railroad and other, under my belt and still had problems with the first Proto 2000 tank car kit I tried. I put it aside and built a few MORE other kits, then went back to it and now it was fairly easy - I ended up doing a half dozen of them, and I think I have 4 more in my stack of unbuilts - and I'll add this - the first kit I pick up when i get back to kit building will NOT be one of those tank cars, I'll put together a few easier ones first to get going again.
I'm doing a kitbash project - the very first covered hoppers used by the Reading were home made in their shops, by adding a roof to USRA open hoppers, adn changing the hopper gates to discharge grates. Accurail makes the right hoppers, the gates are represented by various plastic shapes, and the roof with hatches, latching bars, roofwalks, and other bits are something I am putting together from scratch using Mirco Mark overhang roof stock, plastic bits, brass wire, and roof walk stock. I cheated, i bought pre-bent Tichy corner grabs so I don't have to bend those. My inspiration is an article in a 90's MR, but I'm going about the roof part in a completely different way. I also have a book written about Reading's covered hoppers with some nice pictures to use for reference material.
I've never really done anything like this before, and I figure this is just about the right difficulty level for a first such project. I encourage you to start with omething easier and build up skills, then again try your hand at the monster loco. By then you will also have (hopefully) gained more knowledge about how real railroad work and some insight into why locos are designed the way they are - particularly with the trucks and running gear, as well as financially - that you can make a completely plausible explanation a more or less experimental home built loco using cast off frames and running gear from other damaged locos.
A good example - the Reading was often quite frugal. They had lots of 2-8-0's but needed something faster to pull more long haul freight (long is relative here, with the Reading). So they embarked on a project that converted 2-8-0's into 4-8-4's, the T1 class. Now, this is not really a good candidate to kitbash since there are now several quite good T1 models available. But perhaps your railroad did something like this. As impractical as it was, one thing I always wanted to build was from a 60's book called the Complete Book of Model Railroading by Sutton. In there, it shows how to take a basic B&O Dockside 0-4-0T steam loco and make it into a 4-4-0T+tender cab forward. No, I am not joking. Parts to replicate it would be hard to get today, Kemtron used to have a full front end for a cab forward. However, a wrecked plastic cab forward could supply the body shell parts needed. Impractical as it was, I thought it looked neat, but I never did it as I moved away from freelancing and more into modeling a specific railroad.
There are VERY prototypical kitbashes you could do - for example, many railroads, Reading included, remotored many Baldwin switchers with EMD prime movers. The end result was a loco with a Baldwin cab and frame, with an EMD hood on it. I don;t think any of these have been offered in plastic, but you CAN get EMD switchers and Baldwin switchers and hack away. With the leftover parts maybe you could build one the other way - a Baldwin switcher that got badly wrecked on the cab end, so the railroad transplanted an EMD cab on it. It's possible, htought he plausibility goes down a bit since the whole point of repowering was to get away from the less reliable Baldwin prime movers (plus an unsure parts source as Baldwin exited the loco business) - see, there are factors like this to consider as well, when it comes to creating a plausible kitbash. Physically possible is one thing, but a railroad exists to make money, and even one doing fairly well wouldn't be too prone to just throwing stuff together and hope it runs well. There has to be a reason for such a loco to exist. A load that needs to be pulled, at a certain speed in order to make connections and increase sales. A maintanence headache and cost reduced. Something to justify sticking various parts together.
--Randy
Modeling the Reading Railroad in the 1950's
Visit my web site at www.readingeastpenn.com for construction updates, DCC Info, and more.
Lad, with your best interest at heart, I suggest STRONGLY you build about 50 more Accurail kits, and then tackle some Red Caboose and Intermountain kits (which you may have to get off Ebay) before you even THINK of starting something this major.Old Athearn blue box diesels are dirt cheap at train shows and Ebay. So dig into the MR archives for the article on turning the H-2466 TrainMaster by Athearn into an H-1666 "Baby Trainmaster" as used by the Milwaukee and C&NW.Then dig out the old article on building one of the Katy's re-engined Baldwins. That project is about half scratchbuilt and uses an Athearn "GP9" hood.Once you have done those things, THEN you might have a chance of pulling this project off. The Wright Brothers didn't start by trying to build an F-16.
maxman Maybe you can make one of these out of glass.
Maybe you can make one of these out of glass.
???
Steve
If everything seems under control, you're not going fast enough!
Well I'm going to have to start somewhere and learn how to kitbash so if I buy some old model cheap and create something even if it's not what I originally planned it's the journey not the destination...
NWP SWP I have put together about 5 or 6 Accurail kits varying in types...
I have put together about 5 or 6 Accurail kits varying in types...
So "many" is probably a slight overstatement?
https://tstage9.wixsite.com/nyc-modeling
Time...It marches on...without ever turning around to see if anyone is even keeping in step.
Not yet.
Do you have a layout?
Alton Junction
I would use it???
Mainly because it is well outside your realm of experience, and it would be a challenge even for a pro.
And to what end even if you succeeded in building such a monstrosity?
Sell it on eBay?
Why pray tell do you suggest I quit???
I merely have asked those who tell me that my previous explanations don't make sense so I am asking them what they think the explanation should be...
NWP SWP Does anyone have a good explanation for the "prototype" of my creation? Seems I have run out of ideas...
Does anyone have a good explanation for the "prototype" of my creation? Seems I have run out of ideas...
And in the words of Teddy Roosevelt "Speak softly and carry a big stick; you'll go far!
The word of the day is bona fides. If you don't have some you can't run in the tall grass with the big dogs. And l'll add two more words for anyone interested in writing articles: syntax and diction.
Robert
LINK to SNSR Blog
NWP SWPAlso I have built many a Accurail kit...
So you've assembled a lot more kits than those two you put together a few months ago?
Any of the larger prime movers are too big to place in a standard clearance carbody side by side. Baldwin DID do something like that with their experimental diesel, designed to hold 8 prime movers, but they were small, 750HP each, and they were arranged side by side but facing opposite ways (the generator is wider than the crankcase), to get them as close together as possible - the engine and generator on one side was arranged witht he generator facing forward, the one next to it was offset to the rear and arranged with the generator facing the rear. Clearance between the prime movers was not a concern since the design was much like the modern day Genset locos - each "power unit" consisting of the diesel and attacheched generator, was designed to be quickly removed via a roof hatch and the idea was to have a few spares so the loco could be placed back into service immediately while the faulty unit was repaired outside of the carbody.
It was only ever fitted with 4 of the 8 engines, then was scrapped and the running gear re-used for Centipede demonstrator 6000 (hmm, now that sounds familiar..). It was a 2+D-D+2 wheel arrangement.
NWP SWP Also I have built many a Accurail kit...
Also I have built many a Accurail kit...
And what other kitbashing/scratchbuilding?
My mistake. MILW was 3000V DC. I was thinking of the Pennsy 11KV DC. I should have looked it up. I didn't say AC.
Still, the mis-match in voltages between 3000V and about 600V is an engineering issue that means the OPs project does not seem practical.
Edit ... but that doesn't matter to him, apparently, so I shouldn't care either.
The Bipolars (and for that matter all of MILWs electrics) did NOT run on 11,000 volts they ran on 3,000 volts DC. The MILW received 100,000 volts AC at the convertor substations from power plants which was ran through transformers down to run the motor generators which basically were big AC motors turning DC generators which put out the 3000 volt DC power which ran the locomotives... this became troublesome in later years because of greater power demands that the substations could not support...
In what alternate reality did any Milwaukee electric run on 11 kV AC?
1) Build whatever you want
2) What is the last model you have built? Have you ever built an Accurail or Blue Box kit (these are the very basic starting points)? This is a big undertaking and without the experience and tools that come from building simpler projects, there's no point in talking about this.
3) From an engineering reality standpoint, this still does not make sense. Don't read any further if you don't care. See #1 above.
While there have been some combination electric/diesel engines like the FL-9, there are big differences in them from what you are proposing. First, they are either/or (electric power or diesel, not both simultaneously). Second, they use traction motors, not inefficient bi-polars. Third, they used voltages that are the same or nearly the same. The FL-9 traction motors run on 600 volts from the diesel generators and 660 volts from the third rail. Bi-polars ran on 11,000 volts from the overhead. A DC generator for 11,000 volts that could generate enough amps would be huge and heavy. In real life, separate diesel helpers were used with electric locomotives when needed.
4) Good luck ... I’ll check back in if you actually get started. Addressing #2 would be a good reality check for you and the poeple trying to help you.
CC
And neither the FMs or Alcos could be set up side by side in the unit right?