Introduction and my project

[steron567]

Hello group, my name is Steve and I have been interested in trains all my life. I first discovered riding trains in my teen years at the Colorado live steamers when they were located southwest of Denver in Waterton during the mid 1980's. There I met many encouraging and inspiring individuals including Rich Ulin and Ken Scheer among many others of that club. Well as happens in life, priorities kept me from building my own backyard train yet the dream was still there. Early in 2009 I discovered the Wabash, Frisco & Pacific RR and a trip there on opening day impressed me as to the size of trains I wanted. Discovering Frisco Jim's website added more inspiration for building in 1/5 scale. Late in 2009, I lost my job as a heavy equipment operator and took advantage of the situation and went back to school for machine shop. I did this not only because of the market for machinists in my area but also to acquire the skills needed for my dream of someday being my own railroad engineer. The change has worked out well, I used the time at school to start building a 2.5 inch scale, 12.25 inch gauge (WF&P standards) G.E. 23 ton boxcab of which I have included some photos. I am a little farther along than the photos show but don't have any current pictures yet. Now that I'm back to work, I am back to time constraints so progress has slowed to a crawl. I'll post more pics soon and I am glad to have found this group. Please offer your feedback on my little engine, I'd appreciate the feedback.

[Mike Walsh]

I hate to correct you and possibly backtrack you - but we are actually 12" gauge on all of our equipment, with a 5/16" flange (thus a 11 3/8" back to back). If you need wheel standards from us, let me know and I will gladly shoot you an e-mail with the drawings. I am a machinist at the WF&P as well as roundhouse mechanic.

Do you plan on coming out to the WF&P again anytime soon? If so, bring your locomotive to show/tell, and meet us! If you're a member, our members' day is the 4th saturday of June.

-Mike

[FriscoJim]

Hi Steve,

Welcome to 12" gauge! Looks like you have a great start on the boxcab. Is it a gas powered loco, or electric? What type of transmission did you use? Living in central Kansas, you should have plenty of 12" tracks to run on, and of course you are welcome to come down to the Ozarks and run on my little track too!

Echoing what Mike said, WF&P track is typically gauged at 12-1/4", but it is actually a 12" gauge railroad on the wheelsets. Although they have a back-to-back of 11-3/8", my "compromise standard" of 11-1/4" runs fine through the switches. Other 12" gauge manufacturers (Ottaway, Wagner, Thornton, International Miniatures) typically had a b2b comparable to mine. I have run just fine on a number of 12" gauge railroads, although be aware that MTC and a couple of newer manufacturers (RMI, Lawntracks) use a smaller flange w/ a wide b2b measurement that isn't compatible with the older mfgs or my stuff. Unfortunately, there aren't any IBLS standards for us, but we muddle through as best we can!

In the interest of helping others who might be interested in 12" gauge, here are the WF&P standards as drawn by the late, great Fred Keisel - Fred was always there to offer advice and help, I'm sure he would be fine with posting this:



I look forward to seeing more pictures of your boxcab... keep us posted on your progress!

[steron567]

My little boxcab is powered by a 5 horse Honda through an Eaton model 7 hydrostatic transmission. It seem fairly strong because it was able to push an empty 50 gallon water heater (read future tank car) skidding on the track, up a 4% grade. As to wheel gauging, I used the Fred Keisel drawing Jim posted, I found it somewhere else on the web. I used this because in my search for some 12" standard, this seems to be the most commonly used also because I one day hope to bring it to St.Louis. I don't think that this will happen this year because plant shutdown isn't till the week of the 4th of July and the darn sheet metal work isn't done Thank you Jim for the invitation to your RR, I might take you up on that when its further completed for some proper road testing, as I only have about 25 feet of welded bed rails for track to run back and forth on.

[steron567]

Oops, forgot to add before I'm off to work, the couplers are the RMI couplers, NICE, they even have the word "sharon" cast on the side just like the real ones.

[steron567]

Current state of the project

[FriscoJim]

Looking good, Steve! I can't wait to see it with the sheetmetal in place, rolling down the track. Keep us up to date!