I've finally caught up with myself. After the last entry I've been playing trains, and just generally enjoying my layout. I've also been building locos, with two new locos taking up residence.

The first one is number 6. This was a Bachmann Forney that I bought but discovered it was too long to go round my curves without derailing whatever it was towing. What to do? I thought about selling it, but its a nice model and I rather liked it, so I elected to buy the Backwoods conversion kit to turn it into a much more flexible (and in my opinion attractive) tender loco.

Now this conversion is a bit drastic. It entails clamping the entire loco in a vice and sawing it in half, and this was quite a character building moment let me tell you! Nothing went wrong and I managed to get the loco back together without anything going REALLY wrong. I did omit the tender pickups, as it was hard enough stretching the circuit board wires between engine and tender, so I chickened out. I also cut the footplating a bit longer than recommended as there didn't appear to be enough practical room for the crew to work!

For the details I did a bit of recycling. The previously mentioned 4-4-0 number 3 came with LOADS of detail parts that are alternate so you can make it look different. I did not like the Forney chimney, and I really didn't like the chimney Backwoods supply with it (I've saved that for another loco!) so I used the original copper capped chimney from number 3s box and I think it looks pretty nice. At the same time I fitted the tool boxes to the running board just to use up the space, it looked a bit thin on the ground before. Weathering and coal finished the job after transfers were applied. In typical 2-4-0 manner its a really rough rider, its got such a short wheelbase it really swings through pointwork, but it does look good on my passenger train and is one of my "operators choice" locos. I'm afraid the photo has made the weathering go a bit funny, the brown splodges actually do look like rust in real life, its just the flash highlights them a bit too much.

The other new loco is a modified Bachmann mogul. I had always wanted another of these as they run so well, but I just didn't want another mogul! I had seen people turn these into 0-6-0s on the web and decided it would be logical to have a go myself. Its not very difficult to do, all it entails is shortening the front end and fitting a front coupling in the bashes most basic form. I took it a little further by adding some smaller detail and a new tender from a company called Wiseman, this is a resin kit derived from the mogul tender but is shorter and taller and looks more in keeping with the stumpy 0-6-0 than the long low slung tender in its standard form. Once again a coat of paint and transfers and a bunkerful of coal resulted in a good looking loco that is currently being weathered still. One thing I did do is detach the headlight bulb as not all locos run with the headlight blazing! I'm really pleased with it as it has come out exactly as I wanted. I will be doing a tank engine with saddle tank along the same lines to make a class 48 style loco.