Buck Battery bashes

smokey4life

I bought a bunch of HO battery locos at the 99 Cent store, and have been having some fun bashing them. They are sold as 1870s-style 4-4-0s with tenders, and a circle of sectional all-plastic track.

I previously wrote about a Knott's Berry Farm 2-8-0 I am building. It is well along, but I decided to start another Sn3.5 loco. It is a less ambitious 2-6-0, which, unlike the consolidation, uses the original wagon-top boiler. It is loosely based on 1870s-1890s Porter moguls.

Recently, I've been working on the tender. This entails expanding the tank in all three dimensions, using material from two tender tanks. I adapted some D&RG C-16 plans I got online, to get a suitable tender drawing. Then, I scribed and cut off the bottom of one of the tender tanks, flattened and final-sized it by sanding on a flat surface, and cemented it to the bottom of the other, uncut, tender tank, to get the proper height.

Now, I'm working on building up its width. This requires cutting the heightened tank in half longitudinally, frugally cutting the required material from the remains of the tank-bottom donor, squaring and sizing all the parts, and cementing the tank together again. Finally, the tank will be similarly lengthened.

It is similar, but simpler, process to build up the matching tender frame. I'll describe that later.

smokey4life

Yesterday I finished the initial framing for the tender. Like the tank, I had to use two original tender frames, to yield enough material for the job.

Firstly, I cut off the extensions of the bottom beams located between the trucks, flush with the bottom of the beams. Then, I cut off the rear of the frame, flush with the tank side of the tool box. I then cut off the outside edges of the original frames flush with the back of the lower beam. I turned these pieces, which have an L-shaped cross section, 90 degrees, so that the longer side now simulated the flat car frame, and the shorter side represented the extension of the floor outside the frame. I cut and cemented those pieces to the length of the tender frame shown on the drawing.

I trimmed each end of the tool box piece so it would fit between the frame pieces to the required drawing width. For the front tender deck, I cut out a piece of the flooring from the original frame to similarly fit between the frame pieces, and long enough to extend just back of the wood, or coal, gate.

I then cemented the frame pieces to the front floor piece, and also the rear tool box piece, completing the outline of the frame. I still need to put in cross members for the truck mounts, some additional material forward of the tool box for the coupler mount, and the actual truck, coupler, and drawbar mounts.

As for the tender tank, I just finished cutting, fitting, and cementing the pieces to extend the width of the tank. Next, I need to to extend the length of the tank similarly, to get the finished size.