Update on a growing Spud

Well now it certainly has been a while, hasn't it? Sorry about my absence, but I'm sure all of you know how real life can effect our miniature worlds. Over the past few months I've had a lot on my plate and even took a short hiatus of sorts. And now I have returned with some progress I believe you will enjoy.

I tend to bounce between projects to keep myself from getting "burned out" on them. And at present my current project is a small mining Porter which I've lovingly dubbed "Spud". The chassis is a Bachmann N scale/gauge 0-4-0. In order to make the locomotive 20" gauge I began fabricating some frame overlays to help space the gauge and add a hint of detail to an often forgotten part of a model locomotive. Now I'll admit I don't know much about prototypical locomotive construction, but I tried to give at least the impression of a locomotive frame.

Here the photo shows the new overlays scratched from styrene. Below is a drawing I made for the Spud in scale. The next photo shows how they appear on the chassis.

I left the extensions to the forward part to the frame because I wasn't sure where I would need to cut them for the pilot beam. The area that will contain the motor I'll shroud with thin styrene and make it appear to be a firebox. Fortunately some of the left over cab details from the WMS Sn3 shay kit will work quite well for cab details on the Spud.

Another challenge were the cylinders. The stock plastic cylinders just seemed to look too small proportionally so I looked into replacing them with a set of HOn3 C-16 cylinders. When I made the scale drawing for Spud I drew the cylinders to look proportional, and that was LONG before I even found a new cylinder set! However, as the next photo shows, my proportional guess was actually pretty dang close!

As you can see my guess-ta-mated measurements were fairly accurate. The drawing was made on 1/4" graph paper, so that should give you an idea of how small this engine will be. The cylinders were given to me by a good friend of mine who has helped me with many of my projects in a number of different scales.

I have yet to have the cylinders soldered together, a friend of mine has offered his help for that. And I have yet to find a set of crossheads that will fit the guides.

Well it's not much, but it's something. Sorry I don't have more after being a way for so long. But hopefully I'll be posting with more frequency in the near future! Thanks for watching and please feel free to leave comments.