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I once did a series of articles for the TTOS publication, in the theme, "Getting what YOU want", and l have done and continue to do dozens of Lionel and Marx based  bashes, three railed kits,  and scratchbuilds. Many have been posted on here.  I am glad many others do the same.  Most of mine are intended to be prototypical, but l have a whimsical pickle shaped tank car and pepper shaped water tower to support my Menards, now pickle, plant, and kitbashed packing plant . Keep posting...

I did not make this modification to a Lionel General 4-4-0 but thought this is a good post to share it.

This past weekend (11-3-2018 in Ponchatoula, LA at the TCA meet) I purchased  a Lionel 1862 General 4-4-0 w/tender that has a home made wooden cab and cow catcher.  I think the prior owner did a very good job in this improvement.  I do not know if any real 4-4-0 locomotives had wooden cow catchers but this fellow went to a lot effort to build it and the cab.  I wonder what happened to the original cab and cow catcher?  Maybe the best part is this Lionel 1862 is a great runner, better than my other one and only cost $15 (probably low priced due to wooden cab and cow catcher) !  I will have to be extra careful not to crash that wooden cow catcher into another car or loco.

Charlie

General w wood cab 11-7-2018 2018-11-07 004

General w wood cab 11-7-2018 2018-11-07 009

General w wood cab 11-7-2018 2018-11-07 015

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Last edited by Choo Choo Charlie

Since Mountain Dew, or Pepsi for that matter, saw fit to Pepsi or Dr. Pepper everything they could get their logo onto, and Mountain Dew got shafted, the only things I could find were a tanker from a set that was sold on Ebay as a separate item, jumped at that one.  A K-Line box car with some a surfer wearing sunglasses, and the most ridiculous Lionel fat car with a box truck on it that had Mountain Dew on the side of it.  Looked liked something an 8 year old would design.

So I found a Tractor/Trailer that was 1/64 scale, had the modern Mountain Dew logo on the truck and trailer, bought an intermodal flat car with the proper accessories needed to mount the trailer, and managed with some crazy glue to fit the trailer to the flat.  Not exactly the right scale trailer but it looks cool.  Sorry, no picture, but let me get my trains set up and I'll fire one off to you.

 

Hi Folks,

I wanted to add a roller coaster to my amusement park section of my layout (2 Lemax items so far, still trying to figure how I will fit this in), so I decided to do a Disney-like coaster based on the new Slinky Dog Dash coaster in Disney World.  So this is the first part, and I intend to have a car with seated "guests" pulled by the Slinky locomotive.

I will paint the non-running surfaces of the rails (and the ties) bright red, and perhaps cheat the minimum radius of the O27 down to O24. Hard to see, but I have LEDs in the track for the 'proof of concept' demo above.

Take care, Joe.

Last edited by Joe Rampolla
Choo Choo Charlie posted:

Joe

I really like your Slinky Dog Dasher coaster. 

I encourage others to watch you super video on your post as it not only shows it running but shows you building it like one of those U tube videos on repairing a carburetors!

Great job on building it and making the video.

Charlie

Thanks, I hope to have a follow-up at some point.

As part of a year 'round informal train gang that met Wednesday evenings at Richard Sherry's home in Chicago in the late '80s, I'd seen a photo of the "Silver Sky" dome-obs car on the California Zephyr and thought a PW 2531 could make a reasonable facsimile.

Fortunately, one of the guys worked in a machine shop and told me all I needed was to give him the shell and a dome which I did.  A week later I had this.   It languished in a box through a couple of moves until a few years ago when it made its maiden voyage pictured below.

I didn't physically make it, of course, but it turned out pretty nice.  And I have more plans for this resurrected 2531 in 2019.

photo [1280x554)

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Last edited by Pingman
Adriatic posted:

  IMO building things by hand was what made trains a "real" hobby vs another eccentric's collectable "toy" or model.  I don't feel I do enough really.

I really admire you folks who, after spending good money for a model, have the guts and skill to modify it to make it unique or otherwise more interesting. My fear is that if I tried to do that, I would just turn it into a piece of junk.

I had a Marx 1998 switcher missing the Marx shell.  I found a Lionel SW2 shell and cut out about 1 inch of the Lionel shell to shorten to fit the 1998.  I painted it black, white and red in the colors of ALCOAs Bauxite and Northern short line railroad from the Bauxite, ARK alumina and chemical plant in Bauxite, ARK to the a major railroads main lines.  The Marx1998 is a great running engine and I love to run it. My adult daughter loves to run it very fast and  always beats other engines in racing through the oval and figure 8 on my layout.

Bridges & Water T 2016-8-10 2016-07-26 002

Charlie

Last edited by Choo Choo Charlie

I've created the following two items:

The sailboat, above, I found on eBay and subsequently on Amazon. It fits perfectly on the boat/rocket frame. The mast for the sail can be inserted into the boat. The boat is wood and does float.  This is a recent build.

Mint car with shredded money load.  The car is the KC Fed Reserve. The attention to detail part: The shredded money is also from the KC Fed Reserve. Car and money found on eBay.  I  built this earlier this year.

Steve

 

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Pingman posted:

As part of a year 'round informal train gang that met Wednesday evenings at Richard Sherry's home in Chicago in the late '80s, I'd seen a photo of the "Silver Sky" dome-obs car on the California Zephyr and thought a PW 2531 could make a reasonable facsimile.

Fortunately, one of the guys worked in a machine shop and told me all I needed was to give him the shell and a dome which I did.  A week later I had this.   It languished in a box through a couple of moves until a few years ago when it made its maiden voyage pictured below.

I didn't physically make it, of course, but it turned out pretty nice.  And I have more plans for this resurrected 2531 in 2019.

photo [1280x554)

my late father made one also years ago, however the one he did had a damaged roof, I don't know if its packed away in on of the boxes, or if he sold it off.......

 

This is a quicky to build special interest car.  I made it this week.

I have had a couple of HO toy 0-4-4 General locomotives for several years probably from a garage sale (where else?).  A plus was they had different style smoke stacks.  Picked up a few Lionel flat car bodies at a recent train show and have lots of trucks in a shoe box.

Found a section of HO track and the locos fit perfectly.  I glued the track to top of one flat car with Aleene's Tacky glue and strung some fine black elastic cord to hold down the locos.

Now I have a neat looking flat car load of half size 0-4-4 General locomotives that could be used for pulling small real trains at for fairs, large city parks, train museums or used to provide paid rides at other sites.

The car looks good in my giraffe car train and in a 0-4-4 General civil war period train for a change of pace.

Charlie

Flat Car w-0-4-4 Gen load 12-4-2018 2018-12-04 001

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Flat Car w-0-4-4 Gen load 12-4-2018 2018-12-04 013

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  • Flat Car w-0-4-4 Gen load 12-4-2018 2018-12-04 013
Last edited by Choo Choo Charlie

Currently making with my brother an "inspection" locomotive using a redwood valley MPC general, the body will be made using a lionel passenger car body. Body will need to be cut and shortened to fit on The loco.20181130_074356cat4080 The loco will need a few changes like the drive rods to be changed out so they work with both wheels, rewiring to run on A.C. track and seperate details fitted. Not sure yet on what color it will be painted or what railroad it will be lettered for 

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Last edited by Blake

None of my creations hold a candle to the imagination I'm seeing here.  All I did was find a way to secure three bulldozers to a three different flats and used store bought jewelry chain on line to fake that they are chained down to the deck.  The most creative part was done by a friend of mine who is good with a drill press and had the right sized tap to tap out the hole for a screw.  The only part of the custom flats that's me is that I dreamed up the idea, bought the cars, bought the dozers, and then farmed out the critical work.  I did however glue the chains to the deck.  I really like this thread.  It's given me ideas for future projects that I will probably farm out.

By 1910, Northern Pacific Railway still had on their roster a handful of flatcars 28-36' long from the 19th century. I worked with a few railroad historians, a historic-railcar wood kit maker, and several historic-railroad brass & plastic parts makers to create models of these cars.

 nprr_flat2

The consist uses link & pin couplers; trucks with Lionel couplers are used for the loco and caboose.

nprr_flat3

I never found just the right custom decals to add roadname & numbering; maybe I'll restart that search soon.

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Blake posted:

Currently making with my brother an "inspection" locomotive using a redwood valley MPC general, the body will be made using a lionel passenger car body. Body will need to be cut and shortened to fit on The loco.20181130_074356cat4080 The loco will need a few changes like the drive rods to be changed out so they work with both wheels, rewiring to run on A.C. track and seperate details fitted. Not sure yet on what color it will be painted or what railroad it will be lettered for

I can't wait till we get started.

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