Chris Walas.... Another B'mann Saddle Tank..... a mining loco based on no particular prototype, but taking specifics from Porter, Baldwin, and Dickson mining locos. These squat engines came in a variety of sizes and this represents a medium sized engine from probably the mid 1880's; As far as how these engines were used; the tunnel was often cut with a ridge at the top to collect the smoke and channel it to a number of vertical vents to remove it. I've been surprised to find just how common these little locos were. Every major manufacturer built them, and although the majority went to coal mines in the East, they showed up in larger mines all over. I haven't been able to find a date when they stopped using them, but it was some time after 1890. They were replaced by compressed air locos and then battery locos for obvious safety reasons. There was an interesting version of the steam mine loco that was rigged with condensers to eliminate the smoke, combining it with the steam and draining it down to the tracks as dirty water! Several manufacturers offered inside cylinders for closer tolerances in tight mines. Most were around 6' high from the rails, but some were no more than 4' tall! There was quite a bit of work to get this one into shape, including shortening the saddle before giving it its tank plates. The cab, cylinders, piping, sandboxes, headlight are all scratchbuilt. I used a variety of techniques for the rivets; The ones on the cab and saddletank are superglue, larger ones on the frame are tiny plastic craft "eyes", and the cylinder rivets are cut styrene Fletch-style. This was a fun one, particularly as I really like these steam mining locos. The name Krampus Coal Company is from the European folklore character, known in Austria as Der Krampus and in other areas as various forms of Black Peter, the name of the loco. This character is the one that leaves coal in your stocking at Christmas and takes the really bad children to work in the coal mine. A big Thank You to Stan for a fantastic job on the decals. Some of the very best decals I've ever used! This is not a large engine. Here's a shot of it next to a Lehmann Porter to give you some idea of the height. you can also get some idea of the engineer's field of vision. Here it is in front of a Bachmann ten-wheeler and cab to cab with the Porter. Here's a couple of shots of the engineer from when he got finished (way before the loco!). And for anyone interested, here's a couple of prepaint shots to better see some of the changes. This shot is not of the finished cab, just somewhere along the way. Nearly every piece of plastic needed at least a little tweak here, a bob there. I'm sure I could have done a much simpler version had I known my way around this model first. It's a great little chassis to do bashes on and sure seems to run smooth!