Tuesday, January 17, 2017

TMC #8 - Cyber Kitbash

As I said, finding decent locomotives is a challenge. Jamie Bothwell suggested me to take a look at Bachmann's On30 4-6-0, saying some driver conversion kits do exists. It certainly would be an interesting way to get a unique small steamer at a decent price.

According to specs I could find, the Bachmann locomotive would have, in S scale, 60" drivers while the prototype had 51". Pilot wheels are also a little bit on the large size. Otherwise, the rest of the locomotive seems to be a fairly good starting point. Most parts could be kept, dome would have to be replaced, the smoke box shorten and cab highly bashed if not scratchbuilt. The tender wouldn't be a particular challenge to convert and its trucks would be swapped.

I will have to gather more information about the On30 locomotive to see if the overall size is compatible with TMC #8. I've located the CNR locomotive data sheet and will be able to make some comparison. If it is within a decent margin of error, I guess it could be a possible way to get some motive power for the line.

Meanwhile, I decided to slap together a quick little cyber kitbash to see what could be done. So far, so good. For the paint scheme, I'm not sure #8 had white tire in service. It was a common photograph gimmick used to get better contrasting builder photos. On the other hand, it does look extremely nice and would fit the era.


2 comments:

  1. You might want to consider new trucks for the tender, but more importantly, the 0n30 tender is quite wide, and would need to be narrowed somewhat.

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    1. Hi Simon! You got me. I got lazy and didn't "bash" the tender except for the bunker extended wings. Unfortunately, I was able to deduct more precise dimensions out of the On30 engine and it's so big compared to the real Temiscouata 4-6-0 that it makes the conversion absolutely pointless. It will have to be built from scratch at this point which won't happen quickly. At the moment, I'm trying to gather as much information as possible on the 4-4-0s.

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