ScaleCraft early and later drives

Didn't Scalecraft do a Challenger also?    A friend had one some years back, and I thought he told me it was from a Scalecraft Kit.

Carey, Great timing, I've been in a Scale Craft sort of mood the last week or so!!  Pulled all my junk boxes out to go through the piles again lol.

Later SC K4 center axle drive https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42iGFNvshK8&t=14s

Early SC K4 Rear axle drive https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzkFM-Pjv2Q

Later SC Mikado chassis, same as later K4 with horizontal worm https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xX00w9e81FI

Yes, Carey - the definitive Scale Craft post.  I don't know when they split the frames, but it sure makes driver swaps easier.

I thought the rear axle drive was the original, but was not sure.  Thanks for that.

I shall add my Scale Craft to this thread.  I ay have to re-decal and stripe my Hudson after seeing your stunning photos.

Thanks!

The Hudson, early it was actually a half cast and half fabricated boiler as was the tender. Here is the later raw bronze boiler and tender in project form. I still need most of the valve gear for this mess. Also later had a Zinc alloy cast tender with rivets like Carey shows above.

Close up of both drives on the K4 Pacifics and on the SP Mountain.  

Note, the SP Mountain also could have been purchased with the early or late drive..

 Dang it!!! My order is all messed up!!

Did not know that about Mountain drives and early Hudsons not being all-cast.  I am going to bring all four early Scale Craft together here - The Mountain came to me via a friend who rescued it from the estate of Allan Wehrle, one of the good guys who had a foundry in his back yard.  Ditto the SP Pacific, which remains an outside third model probably for the foreseeable future.

Not the J1d Hudson- the sand domes on these is, as far as I can tell, completely wrong, so I replaced it.  Also, since I have a penchant for Lobaugh drivers, it got those too.  The tender is a "slump-casting" of various size rivets, so I toned down the big ones, hoping to make the pattern a little more uniform.

Herewith:

A couple of notes come to mind.  First, the K4 has Loco Works drivers.  A friend in Florida talked me out of the originals, and I have to machine another set - some day.  The K4 is otherwise stock, just like Donnelly would have produced it.  The paint is getting a crocodile patina, and I intend to preserve it that way.  I have three others, some highly modified and detailed.

Next the Pacific - it came with the same tender as the Mountain - a 1/4" scale tender behind a 17/64 locomotive.  Ungainly.  The tender shown is brass, 17/64, and has gold decals, so it might have been the one they hooked to Baldwin 60000 when it went up the hill.  That's my story, and I am sticking to it.

Yes, that is the original headlight on the Hudson.  I may change it some day.

And the Santa Fe?  No way will I allow the original Scale Craft tender to come anywhere near my collection.  I have two tenders for this beauty, and may in fact make a third.  The second tender is a giant thing, most often found behind the ATSF Northerns.  It has those six axle - oh, what the heck - here it is:

It's ScaleCraft day!!!!   Smith and Donnelly are smiling down ....thank you for showing the videos and photos .

I'll take some more photos tonight ....

the "mystery '  sheet brass Hudson ...listed yes in the flyer ...none of the boys I know have seen one ...  yet .....

there is the early Hudson casting with two hatches on the sand dome ...and much sharper features throughout ...   then they messed with the mold and created the huge single sand hatch which drips down the sides of the dome ...  and finally same as the last but now the steam dome is a separate piece as used as the reverse lever ( 1937)  ....

YES the SC headlight is really that large ...

Cheers Carey 

...the hits just keep coming; another terrific thread.  

Thanks!

Mark in Oregon

https://youtu.be/FCZLToxtEtA     Here's my Scale Craft Hudson       CTR..... ( Choose the Right )

https://youtu.be/K9FWpvP4F2c   The Mikado two      cTr.... ( Choose the Right )

Hello all ..Fun to see all the SC come out of the woodwork ...  when collecting prewar   O scale ....I'd guess about 60-70% of the time if you find an engine it's a SC ......so they must have had a fairly good following offering a product that operators could afford , build and ran .    

Here are a few more photos ...   Donnelly was able to make a small fortune in his ScaleCraft enterprise ..oh course he started with a large fortune ...pushing full force on the O  and OO scale fronts , 1937 he offered die cast passenger cars 17/64's in O scale  and same cars in OO ...

Donnely being in the printing business was able to publish some wonderful catalogs . One of the illustrations is of a "silver"  Hudson upon a desk ... sample ? show piece? ... the engine today is in a collection ..(not mine) ...however  two weeks ago a Mountain surfaced in the same finish ..( sans tender) ..and this one is in my collection. 

SC found some economy reusing some of the bits from the SP Mountain on the SP Pacific .

The Mikado ...sand cast ...there are some wonderful examples of great detail found in sand casting ... not this one ..the tender is  just short of a brick on wheels .  

Cheers Carey

Look at that!  A trek through history, 3/4 of a century ago.

Nickel plating used to be easy.  You walked down to the local plater with the entire model (preferably de-greased, they dunked it, you gave them five bucks . . .

Didn't affect insulation, motors, apparently gears, or bearing surfaces.

Wish you could still do that - I have some PAs that need a nickel flash.

Awesome...just awesome.

Mark in Oregon

Here are a few pics of the SP Mountain flyer when it came out in 1936. With all the locos I’ e found, so far I haven’t located any of the assembly plan sheets!! Dearly would love to come across them for each of the locos!!  Notice these details support the early separate piece drive block like my Lower SP chassis.  Makes me wonder how many went out like this versus the later all one piece frames.  Surely, the one piece frames were a much simpler component and cheaper to manufacture than the resulting three pieces of the earlier frames.  The fact that we as collector's/runners seem to think the later frames work and run better 80 years later is just a bonus!  lol

You have seen this before, but here is my Scale Craft/CLW/Scratch Northern:

This one taught me a lot about scratch building - I think I did this around 1981 or so, just before I started real scratch building.  This one got a new cab and firebox, new domes, and other mods of less significance.

Oh I like that Bob!  I was curious how the frame was done on that loco.  Def a new direction compared to the prewar SC brass hunks!!  Reminds me of my CLW H10 Consolidation frame.

Thanks all for the posts, most interesting.

I will contribute the following (showing a different drive - the frame is somewhat daylighted, and the drivers are sprung).

bob2 - can I ask what you do not like about the tender ?

I have all the  Scale-Craft engines now 2 rail equipped with DC motors, DCC and sound.  They run quite well even after all these years.  The split frames are the early version, then the "new style" solid frames replaced them as mentioned in the catalogs starting around 1938 except for the mountain which remained split frame to the end.  I hope to post some pictures next week.  Believe it or not, I also think the mikado tender is fixable and will show my efforts.  BTW, Carey - post-war Scale-Craft only produced one unpowered version of the Northern, none were sold to customers.  Bob Smith at CLW produced the working models.  I mistakenly passed on purchasing the SC estate with the catalog model of the Northern and all the freight cars about 20 years ago.  I can't post pictures of videos currently but but should be able to next week.    The Hudson master was damaged over the years and this resulted in some of the changes you note in early to later produced shells.  Henry Pearce had the SC prewar masters in the 1980's and told me about it.

Scale Craft was even sold by Sears in 1941.....  they also have the 00 line and Varney ho.