Engine #44

[Mike Trent]

Some years back, Rob Smith and I undertook a collaborative project to build a B-4-B locomotive from a Broadway Limited On30 D&RGW C-16. I know, pretty crazy, right?

It took some scrounging and searching to come up with some, OK, quite a few parts, but I had a lot of them on hand. Bill Davis, "Brassmonger" on eBay, ended up with a lot of extra parts from MS Models in Korea who had built the Overland C&S engines, and that turned out to be a big part of this project. The single air tank came from the old PFM Mogul I am backdating, the tender came from a Cooke Mogul tender I found on eBay, and a flue tube pilot from my #71. I regained it and made running boards, etc. I can't remember where some of the other stuff came from, as Rob had a nice supply of parts then too. Todd Hackett printed the decals for us as he had done for #7. Rob wanted the large tank on the rear of the tender, even though we used a boiler mounted tank as was shown in pictures. So we decided this engine was still in transition.  

Rob and I were running this engine a couple of months ago, and it quit. But the motor was still running. That ain't good. And it wasn't. So I brought it back here to Dickey and cracked it open and sure enough, the main gear on the axle is plastic, and it split. Yesterday I removed the gear and now it's a freewheeling locomotive. A locomotiveless. A static engine with an operating headlight. It ran great until the gear split. So a word of caution to anyone thinking about something like this. Light loads only!

Anyway, thought you might get a kick out of it. I hope I can come up with a way to get her running again.



 



   

[Tim Schreiner]

Awesome work, great job!! It is too bad about the gear.

[Dave Eggleston]

Looks fantastic. And #7, wow. Yeah, I know it's proper for the early C&S but it is also remarkably close to the UP-style (post 1885) paint scheme. Overall both are lovely.

[Jim Courtney]

Great locomotive, Mike, my kind of engine--post-Pancake, pre-Ridgeway!

Number 44 is on my to-do list for a PFM C-16 conversion in Sn3. if I live long enough . . .