As they say in a favorite Classic Rock song..."One thing leads to another..." And thus it is with the "last" major upgrade project in our "new" 1920's-vintage home. The project to get rid of gawd-awful wall texture and purple paint by scraping and re-mudding the walls, has now lead to pulling out the toilet, sink and now the floor and sagging sub floor. So, with that said, getting some modeling in, in my spare "spare time" has been a luxury. I apologise for focusing on my HO-to-On30 locomotive conversion project for so many posts, but that's about the only wheel turning on my railroad of late.
Progress does soldier-on and at last the little engine is starting to look like a backwoods logging (or sugar plantation) saddle tank steamer. I have begun to apply those rivet decals I purchased from Micro Mark. They go on very easily with the standard decal solutions and decal application methods and look pretty good so far. I'm holding out complete giddiness until the model is painted!
I've begun scratch-building the loco's cab, doing the construction with an O-scale ruler and eye-balling it to see if the "look" is right. I also decided to test fit the saddle tank assembly on the loco's HO 2-8-0 chassis to see how the proportions looked and I think they are going to be fine. As you know, I'm not following any specific prototype locomotive for the build, but I am basing the "look" of the locomotive on images of Hawaiian sugar plantation saddle tankers and a couple of similar loco models I found pictures of on the Internet. As I've stated in early posts, the whole idea behind the Swamp Logger On30 layout and concept was to be creative, have fun and not get bogged down with details, rivet counting or painfully trying to recreate an exact replica of any prototype railroad or railroad equipment. It's all "imagineered," to paraphrase Walt Disney!
In the top of the page image, I have the loco sitting on a cabinet in our "craft room/hobby room" on HO flex track. There are plenty of details yet to be added and the under-construction cab is simply perched on the 'business end' of the frame. The widened auxiliary tender also is en-route to more finishing work and completion of the DCC sound system hook-up. But all-in-all, the little engine is coming along nicely and looks pretty darn good, I'd say. It has given me a much-needed diversion from the home improvement projects that seem to refuse to get completed.
Again, any comments are greatly welcomed! Thanks for reading!
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