When all you have is a hammer, everything's a nail...

[PRR5406]

A few of us "Friends of the Duck" have been speculating on the market value of this particular locomotive. Now, Pete isn't looking to sell this locomotive, but just suppose it was to go up for sale? It's all aluminum, has a 24 volt motor, and makes for a generally simple, easy to transport engine for a hobbyist. Offer a speculative fair market value for such a cute little electric drive loco. We'd all like to hear the range.

[OddDuck]

A train you have to run behind kinda defeats the purpose, so I took the last few days, scrounged around the shop, and found enough stuff for a riding/engineer car. She ain't much to look at, but I now have something else that needs detailing. No welding involved (sorry Dick...) and I stole the trucks off my hopper car project for this. Not bad for two day's work.

[OddDuck]

Well, it finally ran! Better than I expected. Took it down to the Silver Lake and Ossipee RR yesterday, and after getting some assistance wiring it up (thanks Jeremy...) off it went! I have video, however I am at home on vacation and on my cellphone so I am having difficulty sharing the link to the video. It's on both my Odd Duck Foundry facebook page and the Odd Duck Foundry youtube channel.
Biggest problems with it is the drive ratio and the lack of a controller, had to basically wire it directly to 24 volts with an on/off switch, and it was SLOW. But it tracked well, no derailments, and had no problem pulling me along even without the battery being on board. The riding car worked well also.

[OddDuck]

Pattygumpus Lumber Co. #1 finally gets a few details. After putting a smaller sprocket on the driven axle to increase the speed from a glacial crawl I decided to work on some exterior details. Found some steel rods of about the right scale diameter, recycled from somewhere. I also found some sheet steel left over from one of my foundry builds and cut into strips to approximate 3"x1/2" steel for the grill. I think I have enough of it left to make steps with too.
So, after a lot of headscratching time figuring out how to assemble the grill and the middle rail upright to the main part of the rail (no welder...) I got it all riveted together. It's going to be attached to the deck with nuts so it can be removed as needed.
I purposely didn't straighten the straps in the grill, figured it would give it that "rode hard and put away wet" look. I also didn't clean the rust off them, it will eventually bleed through the paint and add to the "patina". I've got a few tweaks to do to it but I think so far so good.

[OddDuck]

It's pretty much ready to go! I have to do the lettering on the other side, and do some work on the engineer's car, but other than that let's roll!

[Benjamin Maggi]

Neat!