The Home Machinist!

A buddy of mine has a dual gauge sectional track with 45mm and 4 3/4". We tested it with an otherwise stock, 1:20.3 scale, Accucraft 3 cylinder Shay that had been loaded up with lead weights for traction. The 4 3/4" riding car had needle bearing trucks. It was pretty anti-climactic actuall...

A group of us in the Bay Area Garden Railroad Soc. Do a logging demo in 1:20.3 scale We built four live steam donkey engines in this scale and we typically run them on air for the demonstration. Our machines are double drum type so we devote one donkey to yarding and one to loading. For loading we u...

You are right. I corrected that before I installed it.



Regards,

The Branchline Products parts are great. The brake wheel wheel comes supplied with a ratchet and paul, and a drawing of how to machine the brake staff, but other mounting parts must be purchased separately or fabricated. I used the wheel, ratchet and paul on one of my wood narrow gauge flat cars. I ...

I hear a lot of "G" gaugers use the term "ride-on scale" which seems like a reasonable blanket term to me. "Live steam gauge" doesn't do it for me because so much live steam is happening nowadays on smaller scales (1:32 & 1:20.3) and there is also plenty of non-stea...

Hi Robert, Thanks for sharing all that. Love the story about your dad's truck. The photo of the Alco is really neat. I love seeing that level of detail. My friend Dennis who has contributed tremendously to this project is working on ammeter and oil pressure gauges for me that are nothing short of as...

Thank you sir. I appreciate the comment. I'm moving ahead with the details. Earlier in the thread I mentioned the working sander hatches. I made the hatches operable but what about the sanders? Well I briefly entertained the notion of doing working sanders but I decided against it due to the exposed...

On many of the small Plymouth locomotives the narrow gauge and standard gauge chassis and frames were essentially the same. The wheels were simply placed outside the frame for standard gauge, and the wheels were inside the frame for the narrow gauge versions. I have been able to climb around the 3' ...

Hello folks, Time for another update. I am pleased to report that the cab interior is complete. I haven't installed it yet but it looks great. Mr. Massee I would be happy to do my best to go over the weathering process. I already have started the weathering on the cab interior so see below for that....

This really is an interesting thread. I remember my early beginnings in the hobby. I was an unusually young guy at age 25 when I got into live steam. I'm sure I asked plenty of "dumb" questions. Heck I'm sure I still have some "dumb" questions inside me yet to ask. I do remember ...

Well, uh, thanks, I think... ;-) Of course capturing the look and character of a well used critter is what I was after. With my past in special effects model making I do intend to weather this model, also because I don't see people do weathered finises in the ride on scale world all that often and m...

Thanks for checking in folks! I am SLOWLY ticking off the boxes on the to-do list. The cab interior is creeping along so I'll update on that a little later but I did steal some time to paint the chassis. http://wegmuller.org/gallery/var/resizes/Large-Scale-Models/1%3A5-scale-Plymouth/IMG_3687.JPG?m=...