Another scratched tender.

[Dave Harris]

Here is another Tender I built, I think it is a B& O prototype. All I remember was seeing the plans & a picture of it in a MR magazine & I fell in love with it!
The main tank of this is a piece of Copper water pipe, With .004 sheet copper soldered as an overlay, thats why the big hole you can see inside the coal bunker-- every time it hit it with the torch to solder it, it blew the ends off till I put the hole in it! Durn thing weighs a ton!
On the front view , see the two water delivery pipes coming out ? Notice the "Ball" shape on them , the pipes are insulated from the rest of the tender & the wheel pickups feed them & they hook into the loco by a modified split gold bead on the power transfer wire to the motor, it "snaps over the ball. Works real slick & no wire to try to hide!
Heres a trick I used to form the ends of the tank. I got 2 of the old "concave or Flat" type freeze plugs for engine blocks, soldered a piece of brass ( on what would be the inside surface) to one freeze plug, put the other over the brass & squeezed them together in a vise ,then heated it enough with a propane torch for the brass to take a set, when they cooled, I trimed & filed the end cap perfectly round using the freeze plug as a pattern.

 

[MilesWestern]

Let me be the first to say that you did an absolutely stunning job. I'd imagine that once it's painted up it'll look extremely realistic. The subtle touches you have added to this model make it exceptional. Excellent work. How much does it weigh?

 

[Colton_modeler]

Great looking model, Dave. I'd love to see you start a thread with some tips and techniques.

 

[Dave Harris]

Let me be the first to say that you did an absolutely stunning job. I'd imagine that once it's painted up it'll look extremely realistic. The subtle touches you have added to this model make it exceptional. Excellent work. How much does it weigh?

Thanks Miles. I have not actually weighed it, but it feels like about half as heavy as a Mantua Mikado.
The prototype had much smaller trucks on it -- Bettendorf or Andrews I think, I had those on it at first & it looked just awful -- they made it look like King Kong on chimp legs!

 

[Triplex]

I was just thinking, "B&O had some long Vandys, but didn't they have freight car trucks?"

 

[Dave Harris]

Triplex--- they did --- mine did --for a while . I'm telling you it looked terrible!!

 

[sumpter250]

The freight trucks were "barbers", with leaf springs, I believe. One of my all-time favorite locos, the B&O EL3a, 2-8-8-0 used this tender. I have seen a picture of an EL3a whose tender had a third truck in the center of the frame.
Nicely done copper overlay!
Pete

 

[Dave Harris]

If I remember correctly the picture I saw when I built this was of a 2-8-8-0.
A third truck would be interesting , but I wonder how it would have to be mounted.
I once built a 4 truck flat car, had to use a swivel bolster.

 

[Dave Harris]

When MDC came out with the set of Lima Shay cars after they built the Shay kit, I had a Shay I had built & decided to make a "demo train''. I reasoned that perhaps they might want to take a Loco out to a lumber operation for trial & at 10 -12 mph it would take forever to get it across country.
So I built a train of all the Shay commerative cars with a flat car with rails on it to hold the loco , put 4 trucks on it to carry the weight. Found out in short order that just screwing extra trucks on did not work.

 

[e-paw]

Looks good.:thumb: Post some pics after you paint it.

 

[sumpter250]

Dave,
I never researched the third truck, but I would have to assume that there was a sliding bolster,with limited sideways travel rather than the standard truck mounting. It may have been "experimental", as I didn't see it used that widely.

 

[Dave Harris]

I'm sure there would have been a bolster as you describe.
I could , if you like, this weekend get out the 4 truck flat car & post some pics of how it was done .

 

[sumpter250]

I could , if you like, this weekend get out the 4 truck flat car & post some pics of how it was done .

That could be interesting. I have a kitbashed 89' Ethylene Glycol, four truck, tank car. I used the span bolsters from an Athearn heavy duty flat.

 

[Dave Harris]

Never having seen an Athearn 4 truck setup I have no idea if what I did is mearly a copy of it or not. I'll put up a thread showing it under Shay Demo Train.

It seems to me that rather than adding a third truck to the tender as was mentioned , it would have made more sense for the B&O to do what I did --- get bigger trucks on it !