06-09-2014, 07:33 PM
Well I'm staying out of this years summer structure challenge, I just finished up a large cement plant and I'm a little burnt-out on structure building.
So I'm going to do what I enjoy most,,,,
Building steam power .
This is one of those I'll get to it one day projects that has been sitting around for years and I'm happy to finally be getting it under way. Here's a few pics of what I'm going for...CNJ #903 M-3s class heavy 2-8-2.
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She is one of a small group of experimental rebuilds done by the Jersey Central to improve performance on heavy grades. They had one purpose,, pull tonnage in and out of Ashley PA over the section of the line known as the Back Track. The Back Track roes 1,013 feet in 13.5 miles with grades over 2.5 % as the norm. Normally this work was done by the Ashley Planes, <!-- l --><a class="postlink-local" href="http://bigbluetrains.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=7580">viewtopic.php?f=3&t=7580</a><!-- l --> but a better way was needed. in 1945 The CNJ took a group of Heavy 2-8-2 and rebuilt them with Thermic syphons, Arch Tubes, Twin cross compound air compressors, extra large air reservoirs, and as much weight as they could squeeze into the frame. The Central called them Back-Track Behemoths...There were a bunch more changes made to these hogs that I will get into later, but for now I'll start with the tender.
I started with the tender on this build which is a monster all to itself, 24 tons of coal and 21,000 gallons of water. They were from a special order built by Alco for the long runs from the coal fields in PA. to New York harbor. One of these super mikes could do this run without stopping for coal or water with one of these tenders in tow. They did use several other tenders with these engines but these are the coolest, one of them even survived into Conrail as a fire fighting car. Overland did produce this tender in small amounts and included them behind the wrong class of CNJ 2-8-2's. I wish I could afford to buy one of these overland models, but I don't have the extra $1,000 to spend on toy trains. So lets splice and dice one together.
I started with two of the Model Gram Berkshire tenders, removing all the unnecessary details and grafted them together to get the proper length.
You'll notice in the last pic I have a set of scale drawings that are a great help in this build.
In this pic I have added the rim around the cistern and checked my seam with some rattle can primer. I also started playing around with the brackets that seam to hold the water tank to the frame on the prototype. They will need a little tweaking before I am happy with them.
So I'm going to do what I enjoy most,,,,
Building steam power . This is one of those I'll get to it one day projects that has been sitting around for years and I'm happy to finally be getting it under way. Here's a few pics of what I'm going for...CNJ #903 M-3s class heavy 2-8-2.
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.northeast.railfan.net/images/cnj903s.jpg">http://www.northeast.railfan.net/images/cnj903s.jpg</a><!-- m -->
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.northeast.railfan.net/images/cnj906sa.jpg">http://www.northeast.railfan.net/images/cnj906sa.jpg</a><!-- m -->
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.northeast.railfan.net/images/cnj905s.jpg">http://www.northeast.railfan.net/images/cnj905s.jpg</a><!-- m -->
She is one of a small group of experimental rebuilds done by the Jersey Central to improve performance on heavy grades. They had one purpose,, pull tonnage in and out of Ashley PA over the section of the line known as the Back Track. The Back Track roes 1,013 feet in 13.5 miles with grades over 2.5 % as the norm. Normally this work was done by the Ashley Planes, <!-- l --><a class="postlink-local" href="http://bigbluetrains.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=7580">viewtopic.php?f=3&t=7580</a><!-- l --> but a better way was needed. in 1945 The CNJ took a group of Heavy 2-8-2 and rebuilt them with Thermic syphons, Arch Tubes, Twin cross compound air compressors, extra large air reservoirs, and as much weight as they could squeeze into the frame. The Central called them Back-Track Behemoths...There were a bunch more changes made to these hogs that I will get into later, but for now I'll start with the tender.
I started with the tender on this build which is a monster all to itself, 24 tons of coal and 21,000 gallons of water. They were from a special order built by Alco for the long runs from the coal fields in PA. to New York harbor. One of these super mikes could do this run without stopping for coal or water with one of these tenders in tow. They did use several other tenders with these engines but these are the coolest, one of them even survived into Conrail as a fire fighting car. Overland did produce this tender in small amounts and included them behind the wrong class of CNJ 2-8-2's. I wish I could afford to buy one of these overland models, but I don't have the extra $1,000 to spend on toy trains. So lets splice and dice one together.
I started with two of the Model Gram Berkshire tenders, removing all the unnecessary details and grafted them together to get the proper length.
You'll notice in the last pic I have a set of scale drawings that are a great help in this build.
In this pic I have added the rim around the cistern and checked my seam with some rattle can primer. I also started playing around with the brackets that seam to hold the water tank to the frame on the prototype. They will need a little tweaking before I am happy with them.
My other car is a locomotive, ARHS restoration crew