The Home Machinist!

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I'll tell you a small 7 1/2" gauge locomotive that was popular at one time around here was the 'Scotty' Mogul. Designed originally by Pershing G. Scott of Live Steam fame, it was a small branch-line type 2-6-0. Going by memory here, the drivers were about 6" diameter, the pilot wheels about 3" diameter, and the boiler was a true belpaire with a 7" diameter barrel. Originally, these used 3/16" thick rods, but the whole thing was re-designed by Paul Brien back about 25 years ago. He made the rods 1/4" thick, made several things beefier, etc... He actually made CAD drawings of all of the parts, which unfortunately have been lost to a computer crash several years ago before Paul died. The awesome thing about this locomotive was that it only used 10 castings, and everything else was fabricated from stock that is readily available. A casting 'set' for this locomotive consisted of 2 lead truck wheel castings, 6 drive wheel castings, and 2 cylinder castings. At one time there were at least 4 or 5 of them running around or being built down here at Mid-South, and they all ran good and steamed good.

I have a hard-copy of the prints for the locomotive. Sadly, the prints for the tender were never found. Don't know where you would get those castings any more, though. I am sure that you could fabricate the cylinders out of solid chunks of cast iron, and there are probably also some wheel castings that could be substituted... If anybody does know of a source for those castings, please let us know. I might be interested in getting a set.

I was able to find a couple of pictures of the 'Scotty' mogul, just to let you see what it was like for those not familiar with it. The first one is the one built by Paul Brien himself, and lettered for NC&StL #72. The second one was built by Greg Glos using the same castings and Paul's drawings. As you can see, both of the locomotives are beautiful and both were great performers too.