Marty's O Scale Narrow Gauge

One of the goods wagons that came in the Budweiser set was really a HO scale 40ft wooden boxcar sitting on On30 bogies. I decided that it would be the test item for removing paint. It has spent about a week sitting in simple green and every couple of days I gave it a going over with a toothbrush to scrub off the paint. I used my fingernail as a scraper for a bit too. This has had about 3 sessions of simple green and scrub. I think next time I will try using the simple-green concentrate neat instead of watering it down.



Just for reference, it looked like this before I started working on it:

 

I have thought about trying Bondall water-based turps which is intended for cleaning paint brushes, but I have also found useful for cleaning up paint spills and drips. Need to find a spare plastic wagon body I am happy to test with.

 

Bought a few more items off eBay. I have quite a lot of the Bachmann EZ Track - thankfully the nickel-silver variety on the grey base. I have quite a few extras of the 18" curves, so purchased a couple of points - and got them for a song I might add - so I could make a passing loop, or perhaps a couple of sidings. I bought myself a couple of Noch axle-mount track cleaners and a some fleischmann HO railers. At the moment the EZ Track is on the floor of a spare room (sadly, do not have planning permission to convert to train room) so getting the wagons railed for a running session has been a bit of a challenge at times.

The big purchase was this lot of wagons from the Thomas Kinkade's Christmas set. The two boxcars are again those little HO scale imposters, but they will serve a purpose . They will have their bogies and couplings scavenged for spare parts, but I also intend to use the two bodies with other paint-removal experiments. I intend to try Bondall Water-Based Turps - actually intended mostly as a paintbrush cleaner, and at least one other will be used with a non-acetone nail polish remover. The high-sided gondola and the short bogie brake van have no real equivalents in Australian prototypes, so aside from a repaint I do not forsee any real modifications being made to them. In the mean time, they will join the staked flatbed and the tanker (also due for repaints) and form a goods consist. The previously-purchased underframes will acquire the bogies from these two boxcars and I imagine I now have to dig up my supply of styrene sheet to make a proper On30-sized boxcar of some sort, though a spare baggage car may suffice in the mean time.



Perhaps in my fictional history the caboose is a one-off shrunk-down version of the SAR Webb Caboose design introduced in the 1920s. Or perhaps it was built as an experiment to see if crews would like this style of freight caboose. That would bring it back into my era of 1890s-1910s.

Also interesting to note are what appear to be small buttons in the roofs of the two boxcars. I surmise that these are switches for small music boxes inside the vans for them to play Christmas music under the tree.

I suppose anyone reading this might want to see me doing some actual modelling - once I establish my preferred method of removing the factory paint, you will be treated to a number of repaints and modifications.

 

On my way home from work I dropped into a local hobby shop. Woodpecker Hobbies in Pendle Hill. I purchased a Dapol Kitmaster 20t brake van kit and a Class B Esso tanker kit. $20 AUD buys you a nice little kit including metal wheels. The 16ft wheelbase on the brake van works out as a 10ft wheelbase chassis in 1:48 scale. The Esso tanker has a 15ft wheelbase which is near enough to 9'6" wheelbase in 1:48 scale. I made new headstocks and longitudinals with evergreen styrene strip. The body is slightly out of square, but this does not matter so much as this is a test build using extra bits from the kits.

*EDIT*

Turns out that the Esso tanker kit is not really suitable for this type of conversion as the tank support brackets are cast in the same piece as the underframe centre longitudinals. So the 20t brake van kit will be the source of underframes now.

 

Porter arrived in the post the other day. It seems to scale well with my four-wheel coach. The Porter appears to be un-used, the couplings and tiny screws were still sealed in the little bag. I had to pull out a magnetised 00-sized philips head screwdriver to install them. Will I do a conversion job to make it look more like SAR107/NA1 "Sandfly" or just a paint job? I am hoping that I can just do a simply cab and saddle tank swap so I could easily change it back, but who knows?

 

I am now investigating what to do with the Esso Class B Tanker kit from Dapol since the chassis has proven unsuitable for the coach conversion. Some measurements reveal that the tank is 3-1/2" long and 1-1/8" in diameter. Since I am nominally working in 1:48 or 1/4" scale it is useful to go with imperial measurements here. Exploring the webpages on the WAGR goods wagons, I find a few four-wheel tankers which would be about right in size and proportion for it.

The MRWA G Class Tanker and the ca.1910 WAGR J Class 1500 gallon tanker are about right in terms of size. It may require the chassis to be dressed up to look suitably narrow gauge. The chassis is 1-1/16" wide and would have to be about 1-3/4" wide to look believable in this scale. Again, these would be "inspiration" since most Australian Narrow Gauge was 3'6" and no 2'6" as on the models I am making.

 

Set up an expanded loop on the floor and played trains a little today. I put Noch track cleaning pads on the staked flatbed and after about 30-minutes I was surprised at how much black gunk was removed from the rails despite trains running perfectly the whole time. The 0-4-0 Porter did not stop, falter or stutter once. The layout was also an experiment to confirm a theory I had. The long coaches derailed on 18" radius S-bends. Adding a 9" straight section to the middle of the S-bend prevents derailments.

 

Seeing if I can make a believable On30 tanker out of the OO Scale Dapol Esso B Class Tanker kit. Seems main thing is to make it wider to a more realistic proportion - achieved with more evergreen styrene. Brake gear, couplings, weight in the tank and a paint job... I think I can make it work.

 

So I ran my scale ruler over the Bachmann Porter and I am pleasantly surprised to discover that a lot of the key measurements line up quite well for a conversion to SAR 107 / NA1 "Sandfly" - the Bachmann Porter model lines up with the 8x14" Porter

 

The particular issue I have is a HO/OO Scale tanker being converted into an O scale one. I do like your proposal though since I do have a collection of O scale standard gauge wagons and it would be interesting to piggy-back some of them on the narrow gauge.

 

So, I've been on eBay again and I think I am now sorted for my goods stock, though I now have five low-sided gondolas on the way after buying a few different job lots.

The bent/broken brake wheels are not a problem since I intend to modify them to represent Australian practice with the brake wheels mounted on the underframe. The new acquisitions also include another tanker and a combine (not shown).

 

Well, won another eBay auction. I am pretty set for goods stock now, except maybe for another caboose.

 

Today I received two parcels in the post. The first was the underframes packs and the second was the lot of passenger carriages and bachmann mogul - all damaged, hence why they were so cheap. Not a problem since I planned on hacking most of them up anyways.

The damaged carriages main complaints were the truss rods. Every single one was beyond repair, so I simply ripped them all out. I had to re-glue some of the end-platform railings and almost all of them need new couplings. Out of the six passenger cars, I managed to get three regular carriages and one observation carriage into a fit state to run within an hour. I will probably have to cannibalize a few models but I will absolutely get the combine into service. One annoyance is that the combine is missing one of the sliding doors.

I am pleasantly surprised that the Bachmann Mogul easily hauls 6x passenger cars around 18" curves. I will need to buy more ez-mate couplers and some wheels to get everything back into service. Had a bit of a disappointment when I discovered that the spare bogies I have are not the correct type for the underframe kits. Just waiting for all the rest of my freight cars (goods stock?) to arrive.

I am also pleasantly surprised to discover that spread over all the purchases, the average cost (including shipping) of all individual items has come to under $50 AUD each. I am counting the locomotives since all three moguls were acquired as part of job lots.

 

Just to reassure everyone, there will certainly be a lot more kit-bashing in the future. For the past month I have been on a considerable shopping spree for (relatively) bargain purchases on eBay of the promotional/"collectable" Bachmann On30 gear. I have a fair bit more shopping to do for various bits and pieces - mostly new couplings and detailing parts - but the plan is to do a layout based on Australian narrow-gauge operations, using a mixture of American and British-based equipment as per prototype.

At the moment I have clear prototype inspiration from South Australian Railways, Western Australian Government Railways and there are parts where I intend to work in influences from the other narrow gauge systems. Of course, most of them were 3'6" gauge (though Victorian Railways did have a 2'6" network) so everything is "based-on" or "inspired by" rather than a scale model. I figure that On30 is a scale/gauge combination that has a culture of being not too serious.

Today I put seven carriages behind one of my moguls. I am surprised at just how smooth and powerful those locos are. My third mogul came the other day and it has some damage so this may be the basis for more major kit-bashing.

 

Australia's railways early on we very much English-equipment in the colonies, but over time we adopted a number of American and European ideas and our railways took an a very individual character.

 

I do know this thread seems to be "I bought..." and "I played trains..." but the kit-bashes have already started and I have new projects lined up all the time.

I purchased a couple of Trix HO wagon sets, specifically to obtain the Trix "Kipploren" wagons. I managed to get four tipping wagons and the boxed set includes the unloading ramp. These are actually quite large in HO scale, so should scale well with my 0-4-0 Porter, which has been looking a little sad since it maxes out the towing capacity at about three bogie wagons or two bogie coaches. All going well, a change in couplings (maybe a semi-permanent set), a paint job and some new metal wheels and I think we have the starts of an industrial diorama or mini-scene. They make a bit of a change from the usual Bachmann On30 V-skips and side-dump wagons. I am thinking of perhaps a diorama where the tipping wagons fill up a standard gauge open truck.







A video showing how they work on a HO scale layout:
[The building at the start of the video is the Vollmer Gravel Loader]



And, of course Giles' video of his layout, which is a bit of inspiration for what I would like to attempt: