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The little loco needed a front bumper with a coupler so I used a porch that was cut off of a caboose platform. Just put a Kadee #148 on it and stuck the whole thing onto the front. Now the switcher can push cars around as well as pull them, and railroad workers can climb up the steps and ride on the front...
Have you seen the Model Power Porter Hustlers or Bachmann MDT Plymouths? They would fit right in with your roster.
How about a tooter boxcab? It seems like an interesting and easy enough project, ive always said im going to attempt one just never got around to it.
Start with either the model power Porter Hustlers, or the Bachmann MDT Plymouths for a frame and body. Youd need two but itll add another diesel to the tooter roster
Don't know how the Hustler switcher runs as I haven't built a layout yet and a test track isn't set up...
...but I have another tooter trolley in the works...
It's a really old all metal shell in which I put a new cheap Tyco powered trolley truck. Still needs the wheel coverplates and the catanary pickup arm to be installed.
Made another shorty mining ore car... these are so much fun.
It's 25 scale feet long. On this one, the seam happened to turn out clean enough so that painting can be an option instead of a requirement. All of the lettering worked out fine by making each half one panel longer than the first one, so I think I'll just leave this one as is.
The idea of making short cars is so that they can easily negotiate very tight curves. This is 10 inch radius...
I put it on my 10 inch radius curve test track and it runs beautifully...
It's not the rubber band drive model, and all the wheels are geared super low. It crawls around smooth as butter with not a hint of sutttering or stalling. I think one reason it works so reliably is that both the chassis and the shell are thick heavy die cast. Small as it is, it weighs a hefty 14 ounces...
At the club we have some of those ingot cars....just for fun I took one of the cars less the mold, and pushed it to see how far it would roll. the thing is heavy for its size and the CG is very low, wheels rotate so smooth that we could get it to roll for 2 scale miles. passing the speed-o-meter at 200 scale MPH LOL...
Those ingot buggies do have really "greasy" delrin plastic wheelsets. When I was trying to photograph them on the track they kept rolling off the ends with even the slightest movement!
Thanks for the tip, light... those are really nice cars. But being a cheapskate, I chose the old Roundhouse version of the same 8,000 gallon tanker off of ebay at 1/3 the cost of the Athern, ...and of course I have my own version...