Bachmann #88097 Price: $225.00

I will put my vote in for a Puffing Billy 2-6-2, first it is a 30" locomotive, second it was built by Baldwin and third with a little work you could make one of the Sandy River tender engines. Several narrow gauges in the west used 2-6-2 square tank engines.

Andre

When you have limited metal working tools and machining the points is not something that you can do in house, the other problem was that an iron rail that had been ground to a point could not support the weight of a train, it was not till that steel rail came into being that the strength was there for a point type switch. A stub switch can be built with one casting, the frog and a switch stand by the railroad with rail that they already have The stub switch was used mostly before 1900 and hung on in a few places much longer than that. The Colorado Narrow Gauges and the White Pass liked them because snow would not pack snow in between the point rail and the stock rail like a regular point switch will, so they were easier to keep maintained in the winter. The major problem with them was if you ran through the switch the wrong way the switch was set for the other track you were on the ground and had a mess to clean up.

Before the frog was invented they used to use something that looked like a staple that fitted in to sockets that lifted the diverging track over the main track. Like any thing else there was a lot of inventing and patents taken out on some good ideas and a whole lot of bad ideas. 

Andre

When I talked to Lee in Portalnd about the Heisler it sounded like the Heisler was pretty far down the list to maybe not even on it.

I Really liked the new 4-6-0   that is coming, why it is not coming with sound is beyond me though.

Keep pestering maybe we can move the Heisler up the list.

Andre

Hamish,

The more I look at the Puffing Billy the more I want one .... no need one , like I need one more locomotive with 30 or so I already have in On30. I built one of the Backwoods Miniatures 2-6-2's with the square tanks but it still does not have the look of the Puffing Billy Locomotive. Maybe what Bachmann should do is split the difference between the Maine 2-6-2's and the Puffing Billy Locomotive that way they can do both.

Andre

Greetings,

Now an engine I would really like to see is one of the export Baldwin's like the 2-6-2 that The Puffing Billy has or the 2-4-2 that the Barnstable and Lynn had.
Both looked American  enough and still had English overtones. Both locomotives were fairly small locomotives.

Andre 

Greetings all,

there is a very nice photo of the new pilots in the 2008 catolog, the new pilot looks like the old one except the coupler box has been moved down the front of the pilot and the boiler tubes have been extended above the coupler pocket to match the tubes on either side of the couple bax.

Andre

Just to show what Moose Drools label looks like. Big Sky Brewing has some other good labels too.



Andre

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Hey,

You had your chance when you came to Portland and if you ever get this way again we will do some research, I would have even helped with the research, McMenamins, Hood River, Deschutes, Red Hook, Slow Elk, Moose Drool and I don't know how many more in the great North West.

Andre
 

It should work just fine, the only problem is that the decoder might have the wrong plug on it for the board on the goose. If it has the 8 pin decoder is should work just fine.

Andre

Way to go there Harold.

Andre   

Dave,

There is a good article in the latest On30 Annual that just came out on how to dissemble the Forney and explained just what had to be done.

Andre

Mike,

Welcome to the dark side of narrow gauge modeling , or the funner side of narrow gauge modeling. 

Either code 100 or code 83 will work with On30, actually you could go smaller but it would be too small for O scale in height. Anybodys turnouts will work Atlas, Peco, Shinahara or Walthers. I would' recommend that you use either Peco's On30 track or Micro Engineering's On30 track, both have the proper size tie and the right spacing for the ties. Both systems have good switches available but pricey. This maybe the time that you might think about hand laying your track and switches. The cost of switches will be about $20.00 (maybe more) each if you buy them, if you hand build them the cost will go down to about $5.00 each, either way this does not include the cost of the switch machine. If you think that you might want to hand lay your own switches check out the "Fast Tracks" web site, they have a switch building jig that will pay for itself after the 8th or 9th switch that you install. I don't own or work for them, they just make a darn good product and I will recommend to any one.

I also recommend that you use the largest radius that you can preferably larger than 24", 30" would be great.

Andre

You did not mention it but if you have some of the Department 56 Villages or some one else's you might think about the Bachmann On30 Line. These fit very well with the various Christmas Villages. It may take some looking around for but Bachmann did make a B&O On30 passenger set a few years back.

Good Luck and Merry Christmas

Andre Anderson

Richard,

I am not sure about Louisiana, but out west the use of a "wind motor" aka a wind mill was used quite allot. The other method was to find a water source that was higher than the water tank but in Louisiana that would have been a problem. In Louisiana I would think that most of the water tanks would have been in the shop area where some one watching a steam pump would not have been a problem, out on the railroad they probably would have had tanks, creeks and such at ground level and used a steam siphon on the locomotive to get the water into the tender. Mostly the water was not purified, the sediment would settle somewhat in either the tank or the tender. This is what the the blow down valves were for on the "mud ring" of the boiler. Every so often when running a steam locomotive the engineer will "blow down" the boiler and what he is doing is getting the crud that builds up in a locomotive out of the lowest point on the boiler. Bad water in this era also leads to another dirty job, re-fluing the boiler where the bad flues are removed, the inside of the boiler is scraped down to re-move the scale and crud that has cooked itself to the boiler shell. River steam boats had the very same problem as most of them took their water straight from the mud water that they floated in - on.

Andre