Quotes

Life is short, break the rules. Forgive quickly, kiss slowly. Love truly, laugh uncontrollably and never regret anything that makes you smile. - Samuel Longhorne Clemens (Mark Twain)

Thursday, June 26, 2025

Donor Boiler

I managed to acquire a Bachmann On30 4-6-0 off of eBay last week. As I pulled it from the box I saw all the things wrong with it; missing pilot, broken front coupler, broken and missing hatch on the cab roof and the tender is missing two sets of wheels. The truck is there but the wheels are missing.

Initially I was a bit put out that I hadn't read the description carefully enough beyond it was a good runner. Then it hit me, I don't care if its missing those parts, I just need the boiler! This is the donor locomotive to convert the Bachmann On30 2-8-0 to represent a Colorado & Northwestern 2-8-0 which means I don't care about the broken details. I'm going to strip the boiler down of all its components and fit it to the Bachmann On30 2-8-0, now I just need to find some detail parts, new steam dome, new sand dome and a few other pieces for my first locomotive conversion.






Thursday, June 19, 2025

The Roger Malinowski Tribute Part 2 - The Boot Shop

This is another building from Crossroads Collection, Roger Malinowski's effort to have a line of basic kits that he would always have in stock as part of the Stoney Creek lineup. Like the Gun shop this one features a couple of different types of construction and weathering techniques. 

Like the Gun Shop my intention is to have interior details and lighting to be added later, but that means that there are changes the need to made to the building itself to accomodate those things. The major change on my part will be the roof which needs to be removable.

The most unusual feature of this kit is the use of thin walnut for the side and rear walls. These walls are built up board by board on an inner carcass of 1/16" plywood. This includes adding on battens to cover the gap between the boards. Tedious but worth the effort in the end. The issue I had was with the "painting". In this case with oil pastels. It looks good but the difference between the walnut wall and the basswood batten is pretty dramatic, mostly because instead of going with the as built white I went with red.

Progress has been steady, so here are a few photos of the progress:


The side and rear walls, battens applied on two of them and the third I'm getting ready to start.