Hey, everyone. This may be a shock to some, but I am going to give On30 a try (the name for my proposed freelanced line is derived directly from the former bluegrass band "Nickel Creek" whick begs me to wonder why so many freelanced lines have the word "creek" in it). I was cleaning my closet like I do every other year, and I stumbled upon an old On30 model that I bought years ago. It was a kitbashed C&S mogul that I picked up at the local hobby shop, but it had some exterior damage and the internal wiring was all out of whack (somehow it was on the edge of a shelf and fell.) However, I am in the process of nursing it back to health. I opened up the mechanism and re-soldered any broken wiring connections and cleaned all of the contacts and wheels. A quick test on EZ-Track proved that I got it running good as new again. The headlight didn't work, but I plan on replacing it with a reflective lens anyway. Once the mechanism was restored, I began to work on the appearance. The tender originally had a wooden extension like early C&S engines, but I had to replace it due to damage. I built new tender details based on later C&S examples with wood and styrene. I then added a base coat of black and painted the inside of the cab a soft green. There is still much work to be done, including crew figures, graphite smokebox, marker lamps, decals, and more. As for larger plans, since I have the pacific desert lines to satisfy my N scale craving, I may sell my N scale layout to get funding and make room for a modest On30 layout. The Nickel creek Railroad will be a fictional run from a town of the same name up to the mines, stockpens, and oil fields of Manzanita (named after my favorite Tony Rice tune). I have not decided whether I want to model a Colorado mountain, Nevada desert, or central coast California setting. But why On30? Well, I caught the narrow gauge fever again, but I want to occasionally scratchbuild equipment while still being able to get ready-to-run cars and engines. Plus, I need an option that won't break my already limited budget, and On30 meets those requirements. Space will be an issue, but the running reliability of Bachmann's On30 stuff makes it worth the upscale. Below is what I have done so far. Please excuse the unclean state of the patio, most of the mess isn't mine :]
I'll be looking forward to seeing what you come with in On30. We have a good number of On30 folks signed up here, so maybe a few will come out and watch what you create. I am die hard forty year N scaler, (well, I have done some HO, HOn30 and more along that way), but for several years have been dabbling in On30.
Here's the engine with the silver smokebox. I also added a wash of black to simulate stack weathering. Still much more to do...
Nice modelling, I look forward to seeing what you come up with. I totally understand why you'd go On30 - I'm thinking of it myself and while it will take up a lot more space than I'd like the Bachmann RTR stuff is cheap enough to afford if you shop around - you can get decent engines under $100. I'd love to do some HOn3 also but the RTR price of cars (and engines for that matter) is a bit higher than I can justify... The narrow gauge bug is hard to shake... I have a reasonable amount of N scale stuff but the lure of the narrow gauge is very strong... ;-)
