Asking for suggestions and help to convert a Lionel 0-8-0 to a 4-8-0

Sell the 0-8-0 as the conversion is near impossible, use the money as a down payment on a Sunset N&W 4-8-0 which is the Strasburg engine.

Thanks George and Bob. Sunset's 4-8-0 certainly looks like it's going to be a beautiful and highly detailed prototype but considering the little $$ I'd get selling my RTR 0-8-0 and Sunset's reserve price of $1200 for their 4-8-0 - well that's more than my train budget currently allows for just one locomotive. So for now, I will keep waiting and hoping someone might have a reasonable way to convert my rtr 0-8-0 to a 4-8-0.

Here's a link to the Sunset/3rd Rail 4-8-0.

 

http://www.3rdrail.com/reservation.html#NWM

 

Ken,

Don't wait long on reserving, as I think the model will sell well. Sunset is doing #475.

George

There's not really anything at all out there that you can convert into an N&W M.  The slanted cylinders, Baker valve gear, elbow steam pipes (unless you're doing the Abingdon Branch backup engine 429) tapered second boiler course, etc., are all distinctive features hard to model.  The N&W 12,000-gallon tender with the Pilcher class T-27 trucks is also unique.

 

Years ago, a fellow named Bill Schopp was famous for his conversions.  People were always parodying his efforts; one guy proposed "converting your American Flyer Hudson into a Varney Dockside".

 

BTW - it makes me cringe to hear the Ms referred to as "Mollies".  Only some fans, urged on by a semi-famous author/authority, have used the term, which I never heard used by an N&W railroader.  I guess some folks like to use terms like that to indicate an affectionate familiarity with whatever subject they're discussing.  Certainly the fireman who had to shovel one over White Top Mountain twice a day on the Abingdon Branch train wouldn't feel that way.

 

EdKing

 

Well, I just heard the term in print somewhere. I will discontinue using it.  But Mastodon has too many syllables.

I think it could be doable to stretch the pilot a little and make a 2-8-0, but for all the effort of making it a 4-8-0 you might as well buy a mechanism and build it from scratch.   Not to mention that the USRA 0-8-0 doesn't look a bit like #475...  Why bother?

Try Twelve-Wheeler, Bob2.

 

I think Mastodon also applied to SP's one of a kind 4-10-0, didn't it?  Like "Mollie", Mastodon was another term I never heard in connection with these engines . . .

 

And, as the late John Armstrong would say, trying to convert a Lionel 0-8-0 into one of them would be like starting from beyond scratch.

 

EdKing

 

No wonder the term Mollie surfaced.

 

The poster admitted he would not get a prototypical look.  He is doing this for entertainment value.  I say let's encourage him, and maybe someday he will build one from scratch.

 

And where does one buy mechanisms? Are they available in 2- rail as well as 3- rail?

 

In my hobby I do lots of truly unproductive things.  I can spend a week restoring an Adams E-7, while the Sunset E-7 is available for what I could make in a single evening of productive ($) effort.  It is a hobby, and the result is satisfaction, not fidelity to prototype.

 

Opinion.

If you watch eBay you can usually find just the chassis or some damaged engines to use the mechanism from.  There's a 4-6-0 chassis from the Harry Potter engine on the Bay right now.  I've been eyeballing the Lionel Berkshire Jr to use the drivetrain and side rods to build a 2-8-0. Gotta finish some other project first.  I was actually going to convert a Lionel 0-8-0 into a Reading I-9sa 2-8-0 but then I realized the Reading E-5sa 0-8-0 was a very close match dimensionally, so I'm going with that.

Well you sure lost me with THAT comment. I have yet to meet a 2-Rail Scale or a 3-Rail Scale modeler that was NOT constantly trying to obtain "fidelity to prototype" within the constrains of our model RR empire.

 

Sure, I can see the folks over on the 3-Rail Trains Forum NOT caring about "fidelity to prototype", witness the latest Lionel Baldwin Centipede in Union Pacific styling, but NOT on this 3RS Forum nor the 2-Rail Scale Forum. 

Yeah - you are right.  He did not say he would put up with inaccuracies.  He said " Lionel starter set, and somebody else said it would not be prototypical.

 

So forget my post about hacksaws.  Easier to start from scratch.

 

But I am a 2- railer who will put up with a bit of freelancing.  I shall share the Log Mallet with you, and maybe my 12 axle flat car.  Neither has a counterpart in real life.

 

No prototype - I just got a deal on the trucks.  Brass.

 

 

Log Mallet.  Similar to Long Bell, but completely freelance - part of my 0-6-0 series of so long ago.

 

As a frequent steam locomotive butcher, may I propose coming at the N&W 4-8-0

bash from the left instead of the right?

 

Don't lengthen an 0-8-0 switcher (which the N&W DID have); shorten a 4-8-2

Mountain. The Mexican National had many 4-8-0's, which looked very much like USRA

4-8-2's - with their tails chopped off. But - I digress. I have no 4-8-2 models to recommend as a starting place, as there have been all too few O-gauge Mountains

offered. RK, maybe? Find for it a likely brass boiler at auction? The motor may or may not

be in the right place...

 

But the USRA 0-8-0 really favors the N&W 4-8-0 very little.