Locomotive Scale Shots

I took everything down to the workroom today and took some new pictures of my On30 Locomotives. I used Reaper's Female Huckster from their Savage Worlds line for scale. She has been modified slightly, the original base has been removed and replaced with a lower profile one. All my western figures will eventually end up on this base. On to the pictures.

These are all Bachmann Spectrum engines, according to their site they are simply based on locomotives from the Baldwin company.

First up the beauty and scale shots:

2-6-0 Mogul, lettered and some what modified for the Colorado & Southern.
Not sure how close this one is to an actual C&S 2-6-0.

The 4-4-0 American, unlettered, will definitely need to be painted.

The 4-6-0 Ten Wheeler, another one with a date with the paint shop

This probably gives you the best look at the difference in sizes

Another good comparison shot

Calamity acquires additional rolling stock

Over the last couple of weeks I have managed to acquire a few more pieces for the Colorado & Northwestern Railroad that will be serving Calamity. This time I found a 4-6-0 Ten Wheeler, a type that the C&N didn't actually own but the price was just to good to pass up. I'll do some research and see if another one of the Colorado narrow gauge railroads used this type and letter it appropriately. I finally managed to acquire a combine car, its painted in burgundy so it will have a date with the paint shop for a nice coat of Pullman green. I also, accidentally, acquired another passenger/observation car also in burgundy so this one will be reserved for the railroad brass. The last purchase was a pair of flat cars. At this point I would like one or two more cattle cars and, of course, box cars. I have managed to acquire one at this point and would like at least 2-3 more and I need some short bottom dump ore cars. Taurus Products makes these but since they batch produce who knows when they will be available not that there is a pressing need for these until I actually build the On30 layout itself (separate from Calamity). I have the Taurus ore cars in HO scale so at the very least I have plans for them that I could scale up and work from. I need to dig through my railroad magazines and see if I can find the article on modifying On30 cars to ride lower to the ground.

Here are a few pictures (bad, I know, one of my lights is out and apparently I'm out of bulbs). I included a picture of the 4-4-0 American  and the 2-6-0 Mogul just to give you an idea of the size of the locomotives. Now sizes varied a lot, there were big 4-4-0s and small 4-6-0s just depended on what a railroad needed and of course when they were built. Most of the locomotives made by Bachmann seem to be post 1900 so they aren't exactly right for my 1870 town of Calamity, but they are close enough, my players certainly aren't going to care.

4-6-0 Ten Wheeler - At the very least it needs to be re-lettered for a Colorado railroad.
Updated: Looks like I have a couple of options Rio Grande Southern and Denver & Rio Grande. I'm leaning towards the D&RGW for this one as it should be easy to find decals ready to go, although the RGS's scheme is a bit more interesting.

4-6-0 with the gang

4-4-0 with the gang

2-6-0 looks like this one needs another photo session so you can see the whole thing

Flat Car

Combine or Combination Car - so named as one portion was for baggage and the other for passengers

The Observation/Passenger Car - This one will be reserved for the Brass.

Calamity acquires a second locomotive

I have been haunting Ebay with both automatic and manual searches looking for a 4-4-0 American for Calamity's railroad. I finally managed to get a Bachmann 4-4-0 at a good price and brand new to boot! Its definitely a some assembly required piece although not very much. This is the first On30 engine I have acquired that's in the new style packaging. I needed instructions just to get it out of the box! It really is obviously in min condition and it comes as un-decorated which is perfect for me. I don't have to try and strip off decals or paint that I don't like. I'll have to dis-assemble this one a bit, it will be getting a fancier 1870's style paint job and of course a the new wood cab from Blue Mount that arrived last week.
Here are some photos of trying to get the darn thing out of the box as well as some scale photos with some of my miniatures. This engine is a little smaller than I was anticipating, I'll include a photo of the C&S 2-6-0 with a mini just to show you just how small it is.

I think there may be a locomotive in this box.

Well, its definitely in there still not sure what it looks like

I can at least tell its a 4-4-0 now.

And now you can finally see the locomotive and tender in all their glory. I think I skipped the getting the plastic sleeve off that was wrapped around all of this as well. It certainly was well protected

Here she is with the wood load in place instead of the coal.

With some of the gang (minis in WIP status yet) with the coal load in place.
From left to right; Black Scorpion, Reaper, Foundry, Dixon?, Dixon

From the front

From the back, a little dark to to really see inside though

Now in the harsh glare of the on camera flash, you can at least see the interior detail now.

Here is a shot of the 2-6-0 Mogul with a Reaper Mini in for scale. This locomotive is much bigger than the 4-4-0. I get some side by side shots of them when the are actually in the same place.

Calamity's Railroad - Locomotive Project #1 - Mount Blue Model Co Conversion Parts

While many things seem to be on hold with Calamity right now I have been keeping my eyes open for appropriate pieces for the railroad. This week I managed to acquire the 4-4-0 American steam engine that I wanted to use with Calamity. The 4-4-0 refers to the arrangement of the wheels. In the case of the American it means that there are 4 wheels in the lead (or pony) truck, 2 on each side, 4 drive wheels, again 2 on each side and it does not have a trailing truck. There were 80,000+ 4-4-0 manufactured in the US from before the Civil War and into the next century. With Calamity set, more or less, in the 1870 it is definitely the steam engine that I want to use.

The engine I acquired on Ebay has a steel cab and is probably circa 1910, that's a little on the "new" side for Calamity.  I'm not going to be a terrible stickler for accuracy, it is for a game after all, but I do want it to say wild west. So I need to back date the cab to something a big older. I checked the links I have on my blog and went over to Mount Blue Model Co. to check out what they had. That was a good first choice. They have a laser cut wood cab specifically for the Bachmann 4-4-0. I ordered that on the same day I paid for my American and throw in new wood cupola kit for one of my cabooses. The kits arrived yesterday before the engine arrived (hopefully the engine will be here today, maybe tomorrow, certainly by Monday).

I opened them up last night just to check them out and make sure everything was there. These are beautiful kits and they look like they will build up pretty easy. There are three "sprues" of wood parts for the cab. One of these is obviously pine and it is ultra thin, probably not much more than a millimeter in thickness. The other two "sprues" are a bit thinner and are 1/64th inch plywood, the cab sides will be built up in three layers using these parts. There is some interior detail as well but there should still be room for a couple of gunslingers in the cab.

Here are a few pictures of the components just to give you an idea of what makes up the kit.

The contents

A "sprue" of 1/64" plywood

Another sprue of 1/64" plywood

The roof kit

These are the "metal boiler surround plates'. Essentially this is where the cab will be attached to the train's boiler.

Hard to see, but this package contains the bolt details pieces and the window glazing. I won't open this bag till I need it.

Calamity - Train Size vs Building Size

In a Old West Building thread, from one of the forums I occasionally frequent, we have been having a discussion about the size of the train versus the size of the buildings. We tend to get very focused on how the engines and cars look with the miniatures that we forget how they might look with our terrain. Anyone that has read my rantings on the subject knows that I'm firmly in the S Scale camp and have stated on more than one occasion that O Scale is just to big. Well, prompted by some responses from the other forum I snapped some pictures of my American Flyer S Scale 4-4-0 and the sole baggage car I own next to some of the western buildings that I have been working on. I took a lot of pictures to give you an idea of how my slightly oversized S Scale models look next to those buildings. This is a bit picture intensive (and really most of my posts tend to be picture intensive anyway so what did you expect?) so let's see how things match up!

First lets take a look at the engine up against some one story buildings.

Knuckleduster/Tri-City Laser. About what I expected, these buildings are short so are almost hidden behind the engine.

Battle Flag - I like this look better. The False front is easily seen bu the rest of the building is mostly hidden.

Sarissa - Precission. Maybe a little on the small side but I can see the False Front . I like the look of this overall.

Now my engine up against some of the two story buildings

Here is a Gamecraft building. Looks about right. I wish the windows were a little higher up.

Here is the Knuckleduster/Tri-City laser Hotel. This one looks pretty good. The location is different because there is not enough depth on my workbench to fit the length of the hotel with train in front of it so I had to shoot to the side.

Battle Flag Photographer's Studio. I consider this one to be just about perfect.

Sarissa-Precision. A little on the short side but not bad looking.

Now let's take a look at how the baggage car looks. It is not as tall as the engine so you can see more beyond it.

Knuckleduster/Tri-City Laser. This is looking pretty good, at least you can see its not completely hidden.

Battle Flag General Store. You can see the entire False Front,  looks good.

Sarissa-Precision. Again this one looks a bit on the short side but you can see a good portion of the False Front.

Gamecraft building. Overall the height look good, if the windows were a little higher I would be very happy.

Sarissa-Precision. Still on the short side but definitely passable

Knuckleduster/Tri-City Laser. Height wise it looks good, but the windows could be a little higher.

Battle Flag. Pretty much perfection in my book.

The last comparison is how the engine and baggage car look against my most dominate structure at this time, the Livery Stable.

I think the Livery stable still looks pretty dominate in these pictures. I'm pretty happy with how these are meshing together. The engine is a bit on the large side as well and is probably not exactly S Scale. I think if it was a little smaller it would be a near perfect match to the buildings.