First, a little bit of history. .....
I've always liked building things and got into trains back in the early 70's when AHM came out with an O-scale plastic model of a Indiana Harbor Belt 0-8-0 switch engine, a model of the 4-6-0 "Casey Jones" engine and two early 4-4-0 western engines.
They made motorizing kits so you could run the engines on two rail track.
I bought one of the 0-8-0 model kits and built it up with the motorizing kit.
It was fun to build and run it around a section of track and I found that I wanted to build some more.
So I bought some more model kits and started putting them together to make other types of locomotives out of the kits.
This is the first one that I built into a 2-6-6-4 articulated locomotive.
The oil tender was built from the front of the 0-8-0 tender and a piece of PVC plastic drain pipe.
The little 0-4-0 switcher ( on the lower right ) was built with the parts that were left over.
Both of these engines are motorized and still run well.
My daughter ( who is 46 now ) was 4 then so I put a number-4 on the little switch engine and let her run it around the track.
This became a "winter hobby" and over the years, I built other locomotives out of those AHM kits and also got into building rail cars and other train equipment.
The blue engine on the top shelf and the black engine on the seconded shelf are built from the AHM model kits.
In the 80's and 90's I started experimenting with building models out of brass.
Starting with the frames and running gears and eventually to building the whole brass engines.
Here is a photo that was taken back in the late 90's of some of my builds.
These models are all freelance builds and none of these locomotives are modeled exactly like an existing locomotive.
The ( unfinished ) articulated engine on the lower left, has a boiler made out of a piece of tube from an old brass bed.
Eventually, I accumulated the necessary tools for working with brass like a resistance solderer, drills and taps and small drill press, mill and lathe.
We are in the process of selling our house so we can move out of state and all those fancy tools are packed away in storage in southern Indiana.
So that brings me to my current problem.
I picked up this brass engine shell off ebay awhile back and didn't intend to do anything with it until after we got moved.
In the mean time, to have something to work on, I have been making houses and other buildings for my future O-scale layout
This brass engine shell is a nicely built model but it does have one problem.
The sand dome is placed so far forward that there isn't any room for a smoke stack.
This fall I got this 0-4-4-0 chassis for a small logging engine and it has been sitting on a shelf with the engine shell.
The chassis came with a bag of linkage and a bag with some end caps for the steam cylinders and some spoke wheels.
I've gotten a little tired of making buildings all the time and started thinking about that engine shell and the articulated chassis.
If I added a smoke box to the front of that engine shell it would be the right length to fit on that chassis.
Luckily, I kept the small lathe here when I packed up the rest of the tools.
Besides a few hand tools, the only other tools for working with metal are a 325 watt soldering gun and a hand drill.
I already know from experience long ago that the soldering gun isn't going to be very effective for soldering on a brass engine shell.
What the heck, I decided to go ahead and see how far I can get on putting these two parts together.
The wheels on the chassis would not rotate a full revaluation because the shaft that goes into the steam cylinders have rust on them.
I took the chassis's apart and cleaned them up.
The rust was removed from the shafts and I rubbed them down with a piece of canning wax.
The bearing blocks got a little light lubricating grease put on them before I re-assembled the axles.
I've ordered a smoke box from PSC and that should be here next week.
In the mean time I'm going to see about getting the chassis mounted to the engine shell.
Normally, the steam cylinders of the a steam chassis would be mounted to the underside of the boiler with a screw going up thru the center of the saddle for the steam cylinders.
However this articulated chassis has a pivot pin on the back of the front unit that fits into a hole in the center of the steam cylinder on the rear unit.
There is also a flexible drive shaft that goes right thru the center so I can't put a mounting screw up from the bottom.
There is a threaded hole in the center of the steam cylinders on the rear chassis so I could mount it with a screw coming down from the top.
The problem with that is the mounting screw would have to go all the way thru the boiler and the head of the screw would be on top of the boiler right behind the bell.
As luck would have it, there is a small lip sticking out the front of the saddle on the rear steam cylinders.
Using a piece of .020 thick brass, I made up a little piece that fits onto the underside of the boiler.
This is mounted with machine screws. After we get moved, I can solder this piece on so it will look smoother.
The lip on the front of the rear steam cylinder fits into this piece and the area that is bent up on each side keeps the steam cylinder from moving sideways.
The tail end of the rear unit is fastened to the underside of the cab with a single machine screw.
This is how the engine looks so far with the complete chassis installed under it.
I'm thinking of using those spoke wheels that came with this chassis and making a leading and trailing truck for this engine.
That would make it a 2-4-4-2 locomotive.
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