What Have You 3-Rail Scaled Lately?? Please Contribute to this Thread!!

Nothing fancy, just a couple of low-end Lionel "Western General" PRR coaches re-purposed with MTH trucks as SIRR/SIRY/SIRT cars just for fun:

 The tender is pretty much complete and out of the paint shop.

 I'm on to the engine now. The stock coil coupler was removed. Not a bad job on this version. This engine what it lacks in Legacy performance is a much more friendly engine to work on. I just took a while to remember the procedure to remove the T bar to get the coupler out. You are left with a hole that a #10 32 screw slips right in. I  made up a mount for the Kadee with a tapped thread and JB Welded the appropriate washers in place to obtain the correct height.

 Seeing I bought an assortment of brass. I added some to the front pilot to box in the coupler a little better. This is getting to be like adding fixed pilots to diesels.

 Seeing I had an assortment of brass. I took the cab apart to see if I could add curtains. The B&A is a northeast road and winter is approaching. I read an article about using tea bags. I'm a tea drinker so if the first one came out bad it was just a matter of time till I made another cup. I think once the cab is together it will look okay. I'll try painting the tube antique white with some weathering added. You probably won't see it once on the layout.

 I have a few holes to plug as the top mounted headlight was changed out to a center mount per B&A practice. It will be off to the weathering shop. I usually paint the chassis and shell separately. The only other thing I'm considering. Is changing out the engineer and fireman. I looked on Lionel's site and the pretty much offer the same figures in a few paint schemes. I may just modify the seats and add Arttista's.

Great work Dave!

Really nice work, as usual, Dave...and thanks for continuing to share the details with all of us!  I really like the idea of using a tea bag to simulate a cab curtain.  I'm going to file that one away for future use the next time I'm trying to make a rolled-up tarp for one of my engines...will see how it turns out. 

It's tough to find a suitable material that is BOTH close to scale thickness AND strong enough to hold up over time.  I used a piece of a brown paper bag to make the tarp pictured below.  It was the best thing I could come up with at the time, but is just a little too thick when rolled up.  I think the tea bag material may fit the bill!

Thanks to everyone who has contributed to this thread and for keeping it going.  I hope you will continue to post examples of your work and/or your thoughts, comments and questions here moving forward...a lot of really nice work (and great ideas!) have been shared so far!  It would also be great to add some new contributors along the way...everyone is welcome here!

I haven't had time to work on any new 3RS (or any toy train-related) projects over the past couple months or so; however, I was looking through a photo disk recently and found a folder containing some pictures of the very first two freight cars that I added Kadee scale couplers to.  I suppose I can say that this is where I got started with "3-rail scale"...

Ben Snyder posted:

Just 2 short videos of 614 in her duties for Chessie. First on the Chessie Safety Express. 

And second on the 1985 ACE 3000 testing program hauling coal. 

Sure like that ScaleTrax -  the lower profile rail and center 'blade' certainly make the locomotive & rolling stock appear more massive...

 Finally back on the rails. Engine was a recent Legacy Wabash. Re lettered as a B&A. I've done a couple of re letter jobs on Lionel's. If the model is close detail wise to a B&A. I try if possible to find something I can use number wise. Really looking to at least get a correct headlight and back up light. The tender and cab are easily decaled. If you can't come up with right number. You pretty much have to paint over them. The 52 were the middle nos. on the Wabash. That at least gave me a correct Rd. No.  I just had to paint over the 2 end numbers. I did change out the headlight to a correct center mount using a new boiler front and light from Lionel.After adding Kadee's. Both couplers were framed with some square brass stock. Basically just to fill in the area that occupied the coil couplers. An air hose from an Atlas coupler was attached to the rear. I used some tea bags to make cab curtains an added Arttista figures. I think adding the figures was the most work. I painted the valves and gauges in the cab.

Wow, excellent work, Dave...what a great-looking engine!  It looks like all your time and effort paid off!  Thanks for posting the photos.

Dave that came out really great. You wouldn't even know it started out life as a Wabash engine.

Lionel H-16-44 with fixed pilots and Kadees. I added decals to the pilots to continue the strips.

Soo Nut posted:

Lionel H-16-44 with fixed pilots and Kadees. I added decals to the pilots to continue the strips.

Nice work!

Ok finally finished the lose ends on my Lionel SP RS-11 and finished My NP RS-11 this morning. 

Procees was the same for both. The NP RS-11 was done with lessons learned from the SP RS-11.

After removing the shell from the NP RS-11 I pulled out the dremel and trimmed the frame by about a half inch and at the same time cut the pilot 

Next did some additional trimming on the pilots the started assembly. Using epoxy that rated at 1800 lbs per square inch. 

Drilled out the holes and mounted the Kadeee 743s then applying copious amount of epoxy, mounted the pilots to the shell. trWhile the Epoxy was curing( recommended overnight) I pulled the trucks removed the claws and what was left of the pilot, then trimmed off the tabs to lower the engine. 

Reassembled the engine and let it sit over night. As you can see I am able to remove the shell without having to remove the pilot.

This morning I rounded out the pilots where the spacer was mounted, since the Lionel pilots are squared off and the RS-11 are not.

Then ran the NP RS-11 under a load to insure the pilot stayed secured to the shell.

Nice!

looks cold enough to send chills up my back!  Feels good on a hot summer day!

Thanks Mario. Not as smooth looking as yours but works. To be honest this was a pain in the ****.  Trimming the frame was the only way I could think of to get a seamless fit for the pilot, other then use a Weaver 2RS RS-3 frame as discussed on the P48 FB page. The epoxy I'm using is great. Haven't had a fail yet. Sorry about the quality of the video. Believe it  or not that was taken this morning at 10 am. It started raining real bad and kinda got dark for a while. 

Did my first round of Kadee conversions and it's night and day compared to those god awful lobster claws! I would like to give a special thanks to LOS and Mario for their videos. I went ahead and bought a ton of Mario's spacers off shapeways and I am quite pleased with how well designed they are and how simple they make the conversions. Much more to come...

BigJohn&theWork posted:

Did my first round of Kadee conversions and it's night and day compared to those god awful lobster claws! I would like to give a special thanks to LOS and Mario for their videos. I went ahead and bought a ton of Mario's spacers off shapeways and I am quite pleased with how well designed they are and how simple they make the conversions. Much more to come...

Welcome to the dark side.

BigJohn&theWork posted:

Did my first round of Kadee conversions and it's night and day compared to those god awful lobster claws! I would like to give a special thanks to LOS and Mario for their videos. I went ahead and bought a ton of Mario's spacers off shapeways and I am quite pleased with how well designed they are and how simple they make the conversions. Much more to come...

Nice job...and welcome to the world of 3RS!  Thanks for sharing your work with us here!

Until recently been out of the hobby since 2012.

What we called at the time a High Water Lionel Legacy E7 AA.

Lowered the body, actually I raised the trucks.   Fixes pilots and Kadee couplers.   Closed the gap between units.

Changed to scale wheels.  2 wheels each truck were groove for traction tires.

Finally the side frames were narrowed.  

End result a good runner and puller of the GGD train.  Big plus is that it has been trouble free and surprisingly stays on the rails.   My best, most reliable runner.

Only negative is without the legacy system the horn sounds week.  Maybe missing some other things.

Joe,

Whose wheels did you use on the E7s and what profile? Did you have to drill out the wheels for the Lionel axles?

Ron H

How did you raise the trucks Joe?

You mention that 'without the Legacy the horn sounds weak' 

  ..what happened to the Legacy system?

They look simply beautiful!