Not yet.
Steve
If everything seems under control, you're not going fast enough!
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.
Maybe you can make one of these out of glass.
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...
maxman Maybe you can make one of these out of glass.
???
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.
Disclaimer: This post may contain humor, sarcasm, and/or flatulence.
Michael Mornard
Bringing the North Woods to South Dakota!
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.
“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."
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.
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.
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.
This space reserved for SpaceMouse's future presidential candidacy advertisements
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?
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.
Ok the body will resemble the second locomotive, I'm not sure though whether to build it with porches on both ends like the second or put a porch on the front but have the body go to the back like the first and maybe build a second unit or tender...
Something I want to clarify is there will be two "decks" that are essentially boxes that have half the trucks attached to each...
Base on what you have given in information this is what i think your locomotive would look like
Mheetu, I don't see anything other than a image that says "free screenshot capture"
That's getting close just it's going to have a B-D-B+B-D-B wheel arrangement...
So you need trucks like these then?
Maybe I should be saying B-D-B-B-D-B thats a 2 axle, 4 axle, 2 axle, 2 axle, 4 axle, 2 axle...
I think the plus means articulated doesn't it, if so no that's not what I'm going for... thanks for the cooperation...
More like this?
I hate to say it, but a loco that long would HAVE to have some articulation. A rigid wheelbase that long would NEVER negotiate curves. The pair of B trucks in the middle only make sense if articulated. Even a single truck between the two big ones is odd so as it is, two of them without articulation would serve no purpose - might as well make is B-D-D-D-B in that case. In PRR style, if it were a 4-D-2+2-D-4 would make it an MM class. Like the GG-1 was 4-C+C-4 and the DD-1 was 4-B+B-4.
Part of the problem is that there is no convention, as Wiener attempted to do for articulated steam locomotives, for various methods of chassis articulation in electrics.
A GG1 (which of course is 2-C+C-2 since it follows the German system used for electrics, and counts axles instead of wheels) gets its "+" by analogy with Wiener because all the buff and draft goes through the underframes. But by the same analogy it is difficult not to accord, say, a steam Challenger the same courtesy (which in expanded Whyte notation would then be 4-6+6-4, something that raised howls when le Massena and Trains tried it a few decades ago in a manner that always reminded me vaguely of Roosevelt's 'simplified spelling' push. [The nominal difference being that the boiler on a Mallet/simple articulated is rigidly mounted to the engine nearer the firebox, with the other hinged to it essentially as a compound Bissel, whereas the G and similar electrics 'float' the carbody with a pin at one end and centering slide at the other]. I remain mystified where that intercalated center "B" truck comes from; the poor thing would have to take a significant portion of TE either way, would have flange wear out the wazoo from being relatively unstable (laterally and in yaw, to start) in buff conditions, and contributes no useful added flexibility for carbody attachment that, say, a span bolster over the two D trucks would provide.
I have had remarkably little success finding a 'postable' online reference that actually shows the articulation and equalization scheme for the EP-2s, and my memory isn't adequate to do so definitively. The best drawing I could find (the one on Wikipedia being apparently taken from a book and not very clear) was linked by Mr. Rinker in a post here from 2010:
but this does not show the actual articulation between the B and D trucks in a way I can read, and similarly does not show the equalization differences at the two ends. Someone please interpret the drawing if it shows the detail.
If I recall the setup correctly, the underframe is continuous and would therefore best be notated 1-B+D+D+B-1; the end units correspond to 2-4-0s (and the outer ends of the two 'hood' parts of the carbody attach to them) which then guide the outer ends of the two D trucks through multiaxis ('ball-and-socket') joints. We are I think all agreed that the inner ends of the two D trucks have a similar joint.
One reason these composite underframes can be so light in construction (compared to later locomotives with cast underframes) is that the joints provide cross-level articulation as well as hinging. This requires less work from the articulation to provide stable running (as for example on any modern simple articulated since the N&W A by design and any Alco Challenger by convention by removing any vertical compliance from the hinge) and of course the gearless motors did not require very stable alignment of multiple points in the chassis.
Meanwhile part of the 'rest of the story' is that more modern versions of electrics used what are basically 'repurposed diesel-electric trucks' - B trucks on the late mega-electric designs, and trimount Cs on just about anything after that, including the N&W TE-1 STE. Some of these designs use span bolsters between pairs of trucks, and we need a consistent notation for those vs. fully articulated chassis, but some use the sort of funky lateral linkage you find under B-B-B locomotives without hinged carbodies ... where each outer truck has a conventional Adams-style pin, and define the motion of the inner truck to stay parallel to the carbody but slide sideways, in some cases over 11", on curves. Those have a torque strut or similar connection to the carbody and hence have no "+".
If someone has a good diagram of the exact type of pin and sliding joints used in the carbody supports on the EP-2, for both the outer and inner articulated-carbody units, it would probably help the OP assess his carbody design a bit better. It will need to be rather extensively modified if he wants to accommodate two medium-speed engines/generators, for reasons I will PM him to avoid MEGO on the forum.
I have yet to see the 'imagineering' that is used to justify using the Batchelder drive for freight service; it was much better suited to contemporary passenger service (and, in fact, still would be; a strong case could be made that the EP-2s would have essentially outlasted the need for electric passenger service itself on MILW had the last four unit rebuilds been done better, which is a significant engineering accomplishment for a design from 1919).
Ok the two B-D-B sets have span bolsters and what would be a better drive for the unit than the Batchelder?
Watch it, because the Bs need their Bissel steering axles to 'do right' with the inline articulation. And a span bolster there doesn't help anything; it's meant for two 'unhanded' Adams-style trucks that pivot around their defined centers, to get TE up to pins on the chassis without binding while spreading the imposed load.
The bipolar underframes (and most other lightweight composite GE underframes) REQUIRE the Batchelder drive in order for them to be that light, as no other system provides so little need for heavy or closely-aligned paraphernalia in the underframe structure. If you converted to nose-suspended motors, you'd need to find room adjacent to the axle for the whole armature, field, case, and support; you'd need machined bearings on the axles and on the frame pivot points; you'd probably need to revise some of the transoms and other construction in the trucks that was specific to the vertical-pole-piece fields and brushholding arrangement for the Batchelder motors. In a word, this would NOT be a wise alternative.
There is no reasonable alternative with frame-motored geared quill drives at this wheel size.
That leaves some kind of conversion with one of the flexible axle drives you can see contemporarily described in the Ransome-Ellis Encyclopedia of World Railway Locomotives -- still a lot of tinkering. Having a 'monomoteur' arrangement is going to interfere, substantially, with the prime mover and fuel arrangements 'above deck height'.
In other words, all the economies that go with adaptive reuse of the old bipolar underframe probably involve retaining the Batchelder drive, although you could at least think about modifying it to reduce some of the effects of lateral moment. Right at the moment you decide on a re-motoring, you should go straight to using something like weldments for the truck frames and chevron springs on the axles, as on the GM10B (which is one-and-a-half AEM-7s with freight gearing, with all the successes and problems you'd expect from such an idea). Of course a better solution still would be a combo of the GM6 underframe (hint: it's not difficult to model in HO) and the Conrail dual-mode-lite project from the early '80s ... but those look much like normal locomotives, albeit something for which there is a modeling lacuna at present.
Actually, if you look at the Wikipedia entry that picture comes from, it zooms in many times, and it becomes evident that the B and D trucks link at the pin the goes to the carbody. There is nothing shown in the diagram linking the D truck frame to the carbody. The two D trucks are linked in the middle, but ther is nothign supporting the middle section of the carbody. It appears the middle section is carried suspended by supports that project out from each of the end carbody units.
Hello all,
You clearly need a rectangular shell for the body, have you given some thought about what you what to use and how are you going to attach it to the wheel frame/chassis.
What wheel arrangement did you want?
Can you try to "kitbash" a shell you want to use and post a picture so we can see it?
I was thinking getting four Athearn Alco PB shells, using the roofs from two to make the fronts of the cab and use the other two as the rest of the shell.
I made a paper mock up and I'll post a picture in a bit...
Here's the mock up... it's not to scale but is a good example of what I'm going for...