December, 2008

Nice web surprise

18 December, 2008

For some time I've been planning a little freelanced locomotive loosley based on a Porter 2-6-0. The plans I had were for the Godchaux Mogul and I messed around in Photoshop and turned it into a 2-4-0. The boiler was lowered, cab enlarged and tender shortened. It look quites nice.

Now there is no prototype remotely close to this. Or so I thought until the other day when I ran across some images on the web. Lo and behold, here I was looking at a loco, made by Baldwin in 1906, that was very close to what I've come up with. http://www.flarr.com/maddox03.htm (new window)

Is that uncanny or what? There must be plans for this as it is a restored loco on display in Florida. Very small (I reckon around 38 feet long by about 11 1/2 feet high at the stack. The prototype was in standard gauge, but hey, this is begging to be done as a narrow gauge loco.

The idea of a small 2-4-0 is great for sharp curves and a small layout like I'm building. When you see the photos on the FLARR site, you'll see the tender is longer than what I'm looking at. Since I won't be having a turntable over 9 inches, a shorter tender will do just fine, thank you very much.