Written December 19th, 2001
You may have read about the much modified Bachmann
Porter that exited the Selbyville workshops a couple of years ago.
(See here for the original modification...)
No longer an 0-4-0 side tank loco, the busy boys
in the back-shop had modified it to a tenderized, battery-powered Prairie
of 2-4-0 configuration.
Well, I'd been unhappy with the original Porter
cab even though the roof had been extended so reckoned it was time for
a change. Just took delivery of a 1:20.3 scale rule from the nice folks
at ScaleRule (isn't their business name a
co-incidence, huh?) and got to looking at
the cab of my Bachmann Climax.
Now the Climax is a pretty big loco but when
you check its real measurements it is actually pretty compact. For example,
the highest point of the cab is only 6 feet, not too much headroom for
the average young fella today. So I measured the rest of the Climax cab
and found that it has exactly the same footprint as the original Porter
footplate except that the Porter is one scale foot shorter. The Climax
cab is a pretty nice piece of work, with opening front doors, sliding windows,
opening hatch, and lots of lovely rivets. I decided to make a close copy
to fit the Porter frame but to simplify construction just to suggest opening
doors, etc.
The new cab is made from 80 thou Evergreen styrene
sheet. I plotted the front wall out onto the styrene in pencil:
using the original Porter cab as a guide for
the boiler cut-out. Did the same with the sides and the back frame:
and then cemented the four pieces together using
ABS plumbing primer. That's that nasty pink stuff you can see on the door
of the front piece above.
Stole some mounting ideas from Fletch, that master
modeller and glued tubing into each of the corners for screw mounts.
The finished loco came out looking pretty good,
gives the impression of a much modernized old-timer that is well maintained
and has years left in her yet.
The roof is 20 thou Evergreen styrene and the
(non-operating) hatch is lifted from a $6 kid's toy. Grab-rails are the
brilliant Ozark Miniatures products.
I modelled the fireman's front door partly ajar
just for the hell of it!
Rivet detail is added using a 1mm drill in a pin-vise
hit into 20 thou Evergreen styrene overlay with a light hammer. The drill
is inserted in the pin-vise upside down to create the blunt and squared-off
edges of the rivets.
