Re: C&S #47, an Sn3 C-16 conversion

Posted by Jim Courtney on Dec 05, 2020; 6:31am
URL: http://c-sng-discussion-forum.254.s1.nabble.com/C-S-30-a-C-16-conversion-tp15055p16112.html

Hi John, thanks for inviting me aboard!

The planned equipment swap with my friend Dale was consummated yesterday afternoon (in his driveway, with masks and social distancing . . .).  I came home with a PFM Sn3 C-16. The little guy is a contemporary of John's HOn3 Westside C-16, built in 1976, one of an incredible batch of 600 models. There's a lot of these guys out there, if this first conversion is successful.

I got lucky on this swap -- the owner prior to Dale had re-geared the locomotive with a nice Samhongsa 36:1 gearbox and replaced the original open frame motor with a Mishima can motor. It runs very smoothly, almost imperceptibly, a low speeds.

While John is doing a conversion to B4-A Baldwin #30, I've always wanted a B4-B Cooke, specifically C&S 47 as in this 1910 photo:




After a day of measuring, trying out various parts in my stash of Sn3 castings, this is what I've accomplished so far:




The easiest way to make a C-16 start to resemble a C&S Cooke is to add a Cooke tender!

John's musings about the cab dimensions is interesting. The un-rebuilt Cooke 2-6-0s (11-12-13), the rebuilt Brooks (21, 22), the surviving early Baldwin (30) and the Cooke 2-8-0s (37-56) all share the same cab dimensions and for the most part, the same tender dimension, per the folios. The C-16 cab is larger than portrayed in the folio drawings. I have a couple of cabs from Overland 21 and 22 that I planned for the conversion, but that will require either:

a) Removing all of the C-16 cab except the front wall, then filing the front wall sides and top to make the cab narrower and a bit shorter.
b) Starting over with a new boiler and cab front wall to accommodate the smaller cabs.

John's musing about the true cab dimensions raises another possibility:

c) Leave the C-16 cab alone and modify the roof overhang, fore and aft, to more resemble the C&S Cooke cab.

If John's calculations are correct, then my existing C-16 cab is close, 5'7" long and 8'1" wide. The C&S cabs in the first decade were still wooden cabs with outside steel sheathing on the sides, so the folio cab dimensions may indeed reflect inside dimensions.

Hmmm . . . maybe I'll just follow the Greenly method of stripping the boiler and cab of everything that doesn't look C&S, fill the holes and start adding new stuff like correct running boards, pilot, smoke box front, air tanks, etc. I actually did rebuild one of these little guys back in the early 1990s, for my brother, backdating it to a RGS C-16, c1910.

So John, could you compare the cab of 47 in the photo with the Cooke wheel bases in the folios, see what you can come up with in terms of calculated cab length and height?

In the meantime, if memories from 1992 are correct, the next thing to do on my conversion is to remove the boiler/cab assembly from the mechanism and soak it in lacquer thinner for a couple of weeks, to remove the 40+ year old PFM brass paint and lacquer top coat.