7mm narrow gauge to 4 mm standard gauge industrial tank

[relaxinghobby]

 

This is the Bachmann Porter saddle tank in 0n30scale, that's 1:48 scale running on H0 track. H0 track that's the same as 00,

I wonder.......

 

 

[relaxinghobby]

In it's 7mm form this little Bachmann loco looks a little too Emmett Style too me, with it's high up saddle tank and big cab, it looks sort of stretched upwards. Was there really a loco like this?

 

So to make it more 4mm I've cut the top off the tank and started to reshape it. Here a milling machine would be useful but I have to use a junior hacksaw and files.

I need to retain as much tank as looks reasonable as it is a metal casting and adds useful weight and hides the motor.

 

So you can see the first rough cut in the pictures, looks like I will have to add some filler and smooth the profile.

 

The tank is held on to the model by 4 small bolts, fortunately they are the easy to obtain here in the UK, BA thread form and not the difficult to obtain American number threads. So the tank is bolted to a strip of wood which then can be held in a vice whilst I attack it with files. This means I can preserve as much as the moulded on detail as possible and not squash it in the vice.

 

The profile of the loco: sans tank, cab and that big diamond shaped spark arrestor. I've added a card board mock up of a cab left over from another project, I don't know if I will stay with this style of turned over cab roof? I also trimmed off a milimetre from each side of the rear footplate, see the raw edge.

[relaxinghobby]

 

 

 

Designing cabs and building them up just to find that they look all wrong in the flesh or should that be plastic. On the porter the first version looked too wide so I made narrower cab spectacle plates, the blue ones in the pictures and kept the sides. It is currently all held together with blue-tack, the rear overhang looks a bit too long.

I will have to finish re-shaping the tank and re-attach it to get an idea of how well it will look in one piece. The tank reshaping is proving to be harder than I thought, I keep having to remake the top with filler and then sanding it down to get the shape I am going for.