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Chessie Steam Special Auxiliary Tender - Ver 3

C&O AllanC&O AllanOGR Forum Member DIGITAL SUBSCRIBER

So over the weekend, I complete my third version of the Chessie Steam Special Auxiliary Tender (with help from my 3 year old daughter).  Since MTH nor Lionel did not make one with their scale engines (even though they had the tooling to do so since NYC Tenders already existed), I went off to make my own.

 

Version 1

 

My first version was made from a scale hudson tender.  It was pretty straight forward to paint and decal:

 

 

 

Version 2A

 

Version 2A was made from two hudson Tenders that I cut and spliced to get the correct length (or close to it).  Unfortunately, I did not use the same tender body, so the thickness was slightly different:

 

 

Version 2B

 

Because I have LTS (Long Train Syndrome), I ended up having more passenger cars (13) than Lionel Pullmor engine could pull.  So I took the motors from an MTH Railking SD engine and mated them with a new frame I made from brass to give another motor to pull the train (one of our club members said it was just wrong when I used the Aux tender to pull the train without the steam engine ):

 

 

 

Version 3 (The Final Version)

 

After finding someone on the forum selling the prototypical NYC tender, my daughter and I went on the odyssey of making the third version.  I made the coal bunker cover out of sheet aluminum.  Then I did the primer, and she helped me with the airbrushing of the other three colors (yellow, orange, and blue).  I then clean up the decals from Version 2 and applied them last weekend.  Here is the result (which I am very happy with):

 

 

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C&O AllanC&O AllanOGR Forum Member DIGITAL SUBSCRIBER
Originally Posted by sinclair:

Neat.  Could you provide more details and photos on covering/modding the coal bunker to look like it's part of the water tank?  I'm thinking about doing something like this for my PRR steamers.

No problem.  

 

On the prototype, they put sheet metal over the coal bunker and turned the bunker into a machine shop.  Basing my version on the prototype, I started with thin styrene to get the overall dimensions (it's hard to measure width with the curve) after removing the existing coal load (which was a plastic insert held by two screws on this model).  Once I had it set right with the styrene, I then traced the size onto the aluminum.  I cut it out with a metal blade on my jig saw, and then smoothed out the edges/corners with a grinding wheel on my dremel.

 

After cutting and grinding, I found a round can that was close to the curvature I needed, and using spring clamps, I started bending the aluminum to get the curve I wanted.  I did the radius slightly tighter than what I needed to get a good fit over the tender coal bin ends.  The attachment fittings I made would pull down the top to fit better.

 

For the attachment, I put the cover in place and then glued self locking nuts (the nuts with the nylon inserts) together to make standoffs.  I glued them together with JB weld.  I then glued the standoff to the aluminum using super glue gel.

 

Once the glue was dry, I masked the nuts, and primed and painted the cover.  Then I installed it, being very careful to do it slowly to ensure the screw did not break the glue loose (it did on one of them).  I used washers on the screws to ensure a snug fit to where the screw just started getting into the nylon part of the self locking nut.

 

Here are pictures of both ends of the cover.  If you look closely, you can see the standoffs (and JB Weld) between the coal bin ends and the cover.

 

 

 

On my Version 2 cover, I just used straight styrene that was slightly wider than the coal bin.  I made a bead of Super Glue Gel on one side of the coal bin and glued that edge.  Then I did the same on the second side.  Because the styrene was slightly wider than the coal bin, when that edge was glued, I got a natural curve of the cover.  You can sort of see this in the Version 2A picture.

 

Please let me know if you have any questions.

Last edited by C&O Allan
C&O AllanC&O AllanOGR Forum Member DIGITAL SUBSCRIBER

Hey Chris,

No problem.  The blue goes only on sides above the orange stripe and below the coal bin cover which is black.

As for which blue to use, whichever matches the engine's blue stripe the most.  I only had the B&O paint on hand which was pretty close to the Chessie Blue on the engine.

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