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This thread is, for now, a reader's digest version of the posts made over the course of a few years at the Yardbird Trains Yahoo Group.
I will open with a few pictures of the filing. You will see, as time goes by, the continued filing and filing and filing and sawing and grinding to gradually remove bits of zamac from the boiler and eventually the cab. I don't have a really nice picture of the engine pre-filing...shoulda woulda coulda taken one then, I suppose. Oh well.
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In this image above you can see the engineer's side. The cast-on details removed include the sand lines, injector pipe and check valve from the boiler, the stay bolts and piping from the firebox, as well as the generator, whistle, headlight above the running board and power reverse below.
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On the fireman's side, many of the same details were removed as well as the compressor casting and a big chunk of the running board. Also note the cast on air piping above the cast air tanks has been filed down. Originally I had planned on just adding new piping on top of that flattened area.
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Here you can see the hole drilled through the headlight mount (find the red circle). The hole drilled from above down through the mount was a smaller diameter than the hole drilled from below. It's like one of those tunnel projects where two teams dig, one from each side of the mountain, and meet in the middle. I did all of this drilling with pin vises (one for each diameter bit...saved me from constantly changing bits) by hand with plenty of time, patience, and Singer sewing machine oil for lubricant.
Galen
I may not be a rivet counter, but I sure do like rivets!
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Galen, is this a modification that you are doing to a ready made brass model or did you start from scratch to build a brass locomotive?
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No, this is a modification of a Mantua "Shifter" 0-4-0 with tender. The boiler, frame and cab are all metal (zamac, I think) and the tender shell is plastic with a cast underframe. I am heavily modifying the engine's details, replacing almost all of the cast on detail with individually applied parts. The only brass scratch work I've done so far has been rebuilding an air tank and making little drop steps for the running board extensions, but I'm getting ahead of myself... 
I have remotored the engine with a drop-in replacement from Yardbird Classic Trains that really lowers the starting speed and makes a smoother running engine. Also from YB, I added the valve gear kit. These changes alone would have vastly improved what was already a decent little engine, but I really wanted to go nuts on this one with the detailing.
Russ, you know Joe V.'s work. It, along with Ray M.'s fine detailing and Wayne's Beeg Boy have been inspiration and encouragement throughout this process. Also, there's a fellow over on the Railroad-line forum who used this boiler with an MDC underframe to make a neat little 2-8-0.
Galen
I may not be a rivet counter, but I sure do like rivets!
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Interesting Galen, that boiler appears to have a sort of "golden color" on my computer, so I thought it was brass. Yes I would agree, Joe, Ray, and Wayne can sure get you motivated to try to detail steam engines as well as improve their operating abilities!
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Here are three images of the frame and the modifications/additions I made.
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First, a basic side-on shot. Note the brake cylinders, the grooves cut into the frame ahead of each wheelset, and the coupler lift bar.
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A shot focusing on the grooves I cut into the frame with a file. These are actually lined with styrene v-channel, to insulate the metal brake shoe and hanger castings from the frame so as not to short out the wheelsets. More on those in an upcoming post.
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This underside shot shows the coupler mounting. Basically it's a kadee with 'whiskers' held in place with a narrowed bit from a kadee coupler box. And look at how clean that gear looks! When I got this little gem she was in decent shape but, like all well used and worn classic steamers she needed a bit of TLC.
These images as well as the ones in the first post are from early 2006. This project has been fits and spurts depending on life situations and conditions at the time, as well as other railroad-related projects going on.
Oh, and uh, Happy New Year!
Galen
I may not be a rivet counter, but I sure do like rivets!
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Alrighty, here's a shot of the engine with the D8120 drop-in replacement motor mounted. This fantastic little can motor and custom mount is by Yardbird Classic Trains and made an instant and remarkable difference in operating quality. Not only that, but it simplified DCC wiring considerably, not having to go through isolating the original motor from the frame.
The only flaw was a slippery worm gear. I wrestled with how to keep it from sliding up and down the axle when changing direction ( ultimately grinding to a halt when reaching one end or another as the teeth became un-meshed or bound) for a while, then decided to use a thread-locking liquid. This has been a good solution as the gear has held through mounting and unmounting the motor unit during construction & deconstruction and testing, etc.
If you look closely you can see waayy back in the the background a fuzzy green and black open-platform passenger car. This is the Ocali Creek Railway's finest varnish at present. It's a Northeastern wood kit that was fun to build. Painting and lettering (and literally, varnishing) was fun too. Now I need to add little plastic (or metal) passengers and find a good source for placing the underbody details in a plausible manner to complete the model. A sister coach is still awaiting construction. For now, this combine brings up the tail of a mixed train.
Galen
I may not be a rivet counter, but I sure do like rivets!
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Galen, What beautiful work! I'm impressed with how carefully you've removed the cast-on detail. It's shaping up to be an excellent project!
One major question is why didn't you have someone plate the drivers with nickel-silver to improve electrical conductivity? There are a couple of locomotive repair cottage industries that specialize in this.
I do really enjoy that you assembled the full valve gear!  Time well spent. 
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Hey thanks, MW!  I took my time and filed away the detail with needle files, cleaning them regularly, and stopping to check the work. That is, refreshing the coffee or other beverage, making the coffee deposit, etc. so that I could get up and stretch my legs then return and hopefully get a refreshed perspective. Taking pictures for posting in the YBT group also brought out detail (or lack thereof) I may not have seen.
As for the drivers, well, I would love to have them plated! However, I didn't set aside the funds for that at the time and may not venture into that work until after the rest of the detailing is completed (and probably before painting...we'll see). This project has already taken a few years (you're still looking at pics from '06 at this point) and I'm not sure I want to drag it out more than I already am...we'll see.
Valve gear is fun. Yep, there, I said it.  Now, I may rue the day I tried it, but I am contemplating adding a few other bits to the valve gear in order to simulate the reverse gear to power reverse linkage. This will involve drilling a couple holes and fabricating a few tiny parts. It may not be that bad but it may be my undoing! But then, I'm once again getting ahead of myself.
More to come!
Galen
I may not be a rivet counter, but I sure do like rivets!
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For the tender I borrowed a pair of caboose trucks from a P2K Northeastern-style steel caboose. Mine was lettered for Western Maryland and I had originally bought it to run behind an aging BL-2 (not P2k) of the same road name. I was never entirely happy with the lighting flickering in the caboose so it was no major loss to use these trucks on the Shifter.
This was an 'aha!' moment after wrestling with how to add pickup contacts or wipers or something to the tender. The tender trucks already have the wipers attached. The Engine wheels will not pick up any current. The motor is already isolated and I didn't want to have to run another pair of wires (or maybe just one) back to the tender.
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As you can see, there are a few holes drilled through the tender floor. I made sure to deburr the holes so as not to wear down the insulation on the wires and potentially cause a short. No smoky decoders for me, thanks.
Also you can see where I milled out the frame to accept a modified Kadee coupler box. I'm beginning to think those wire whiskers have more integrity and resilience than the little brassy metal spring plates. I know there was some concern that they'd lose their springiness over time and maybe they will, but so far I like mine just fine.
In this image I had wired up the engine and tender with a decoder to test operating characteristics. At that point it was AoK, and subsequent testing has been the same. This should be a sweet little runner when it's all done.
Galen
I may not be a rivet counter, but I sure do like rivets!
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Up next is a better shot of the underside detail. I added styrene triangles and brass strip to simulate brake rigging and rods. The rods eventually fell off and I have never added them back.
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Galen
I may not be a rivet counter, but I sure do like rivets!
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Two images of the styrene rivet overlay, plus washout plugs and blowdown detail. Also the addition of the auxiliary dome/turret, generator and sand lines.
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Galen
I may not be a rivet counter, but I sure do like rivets!
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it's looking good! Those old white metal kits are a challenge, but definitely fun! I had a few MDC kits where I spent hours filing off the cast-on details :mrgreen:
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Kevin
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Kevin - got any pictures of those old metal MDC's to share? I'm interested.
Galen
I may not be a rivet counter, but I sure do like rivets!
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Galen, your re-build is looking good, although I'm surprised that you didn't add four-wheel pick-up on the loco, since the motor is already isolated. Usually, and especially with a small loco, the more wheels collecting current, the better.
I'm looking forward to following your progress on this, as it's nice to see someone still taking the time to do this kind of work. (And doing it well, I might add.)
Wayne
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Wayne - Glad to do this kind of work and see an old gal return to service. Mantua did a few things right when they built these 'lead sleds', although I might call this little thing a 'chuggin nugget'.
I may decide after running it a while that it will benefit from driver pickups. Currently this project is on hold while I do just that to a Mantua Classics 0-6-0T. Check out this video:
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Thank you so much for the compliments; there are still more pictures to add before this thread catches up with the present stage of detailing.
Galen
I may not be a rivet counter, but I sure do like rivets!
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