Bachmann 'Annie' into mogul
There is just something about the 2-6-0 configuration that draws me in. I've chopped up several Bachmann 10-wheelers and
turned them into moguls. When the Sam's Club set came out I found myself unable to resist the opportunity to turn it
into yet another mogul. The biggest challenge was to shorten the Walscharts valve gearing and make it function after
the cylinders were moved back to a position just ahead of the first drivers. Shorten here, shorten there..oops, try
again, was the drill.
It finally decided to cooperate and run smoothly so that I could move on to the body of the engine. After a couple
of false starts I settled on moving the section of the boiler that holds the steam dome back to a point just ahead
of the cab. My original thought was to build a straight boiler but decided that it would be too fat so I reattached
a small section of the taper and made the section that would hold the sand dome from 2 3/4 inch diameter ABS plastic
from Plastruct.
I faced a new problem in joining two pieces of plastic tubing end to end that had different wall thicknesses. I butted
them together and glued with Plastruct's all purpose solvent and it worked fine but I felt that more strength would be
necessary so I cut a piece of the fiberglass tape that is used as drywall tape and reinforced it with the autobody workers
friend, Bondo. All this, of course, is inside the boiler.
The two attachment points under the cab floor are still in use to connect the body to the frame and a new hole and screw
hold the smoke box onto the cylinder saddle. The cab now sits 7/8 inch to the rear of its original position so the cab
floor and the hook to connect to the tender have also been extended.
I set it all up to take the pictures and am about ready to glue the body parts together, start adding all the wonderful
details that Bachmann put into the Annie, and get it ready to send to the paint shop.
Almost three months of sporadic work have finally brought this project together. There have been many distractions to
keep me away from the workbench. It still isn't totally finished as I want to weather it a bit and I have to be in the
proper mood to tackle that job. I like to set up outside to see how the weathering progresses in the sunshine. The mood
to weather and the flow of rainstorms that are coming in from the Pacific have kept this from happening.
Here are two pictures, combined to show the differences. The second Sam's Club "Annie" that I bought and the revised version
are shown on the same section of track. The pictures were taken with with the same camera on a tripod so we could see the
changes that were made.
The body and cab are a single unit.
The (almost) finished locomotive
The tender was shortened by 1 5/8 inches and an oil tank, an air tank, a water filler and a ladder were scratchbuilt and
installed.
I just noticed that I'd removed the pipe that runs from the airtank to the front of the tender to apply Stan's decals to the
tender side and forgot to put it back. Oh well, not the first "Ooops" on this project and probably not the last.
Here's a shot of the tender tank and one of the filler
Somebody has to run the loco so two of the Fine Folk characters were seated as the engineer and the fireman.
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