The Home Machinist!

Here is an update:

Several things have happened since that photo was taken. I now have my own house
with a garage that can be used as workshop. No more borrowing space from
friends and relatives. The only problem is that the garage is unbearably hot
in the summer limiting the time that I can work on the locomotive.

Lately I've mostly been working on finishing off a 1870s gondola riding car. I've
almost completed painting the car as can be seen in the attached photo.

The engine has been run on compressed air several times and tested by pulling
a single car a short distance. It has been fired up once and moved carefully
about 2 feet back and forth on the stand shown in the photograph below.

The next step will be to build a hand pump to feed the boiler when
the engine is not moving. My first attempt produced a pump that didn't
work very well and was a bit too large for the space inside the tank.

You should also seriously consider getting one of Anthony Duarte's small-scale injectors and installing it on the locomotive when those become available. That, along with your hand pump, would give you three methods for adding water to the boiler. I can guarantee that you'll love having a properly sized injector on that locomotive once it is up and running.

Our club has a L.E. Baldwin mogul (1870's style) that has a Superscale Chicago injector on it. I'm seriously thinking about swapping that out for one of the smaller ones. Right now, you turn the injector on for about 8 or 9 seconds, and then you have to turn it back off because you've lost 15 to 20 PSI in your boiler! Your glass is pretty full now, but that pressure will drop quick from such a large injector and a small boiler. Injectors, like all other methods for adding water, should be sized to the needs of the locomotive they are going on.

c.p.huntington wrote:Here is an update:

Several things have happened since that photo was taken. I now have my own house
with a garage that can be used as workshop. No more borrowing space from
friends and relatives. The only problem is that the garage is unbearably hot
in the summer limiting the time that I can work on the locomotive.

I've been there (live in north Florida) but I now have a window AC unit in the shop mounted in a hole in the wall. before that I had one of those 4 foot dia. attic fans on a roller stand. They really can move some air. Also put some insulation in the roof to block out summer heat.
Fred V

Happy to say my C.P.Huntington is still alive and kicking after 40+ years, a new boiler and a half a dozen rebuilds/redesigns, and a few spectacular crashes. Extensively modified from the original Little Engines design, but it runs and pulls (though it prefers a level, if not "negatively graded") track. The boxcar was great when I was young, but being older, wider and less flexible, it becomes less pleasant to sit on and run with. On my list of things to do one of these days is a replica of a Central Pacific auxiliary water car from the same era. My first advice to C.P. Huntington builders is build the American. If you choose to ignore that, I am willing to share my thesis on how to make it work.

anyone built a 4-6-0 from these castings? Seems like an old time 4-6-0 might be a neat locomotive. I guess quite a bit smaller than a allen 4-6-0

I believe that the c.p. you saw in Riverside years ago is in the San Diego model rail musem my dad can not remember the guy that owned it but he was friends with a guy named Ace Wistach his loco also resides in the musem it is a L/E American. both long gone now probebly in live steam heaven

I am glad to see this coming together I did Supply some information to the Builder I quit producing The Boxcar because the patterns were in such bad shape and it was difficult to find somebody to cash them I have since sold off the American Baldwin mobile crab and the CP Huntington rights and boxcar patterns to Jesse Banning Jesse has built the box car now and would and did a magnificent job the purpose of The Boxcar was actually to carry water for the CP Huntington

Attached is an article on the modifications I made to my engine to get traction and improve tracking capability. The pictures go with the article. The photos probably don't mean much unless one is intimately familiar with the kit, but this is for the benefit of anyone building the engine to save them the agony of poor traction. I think I have it to the point where it will pull as well as the American despite the single driver.