Would anyone like to see a Vanderbilt tender kitbash?

I sure would. Mine has been sitting in a box for about four years waiting for me to finish it. I'd like to see yours, especially a step by step documentary, please.

In a word - yes!

Ok, done deal then...I happen to have the MTH Great Northern rotary and as I recall they ran a few vandys on their steamers so this should work on multiple levels. I was thinking of trying a kitbash of the rotary to reskin it as a Leslie type{steel bodied} and repaint as a Q piece, but I have too many other wants to do before that one, so I'll keep it simple this time and just bash a vandy tender. I'll probably do a few DRG mods to the rotary like making an angled backend extention - a tender 1st though.

You bet I would!

I like Vanderbilt tenders...unfortunately the one I had was the Lionel version that came with their Hudson set. That tender was die cast and so heavy that the engine was pulling the weight of a train before it was ever coupled to a train!

Yes, please.

Here's my Seaboard Vanderbilt tender I built for my class Q3 Mikado:

There's no one standard Vanderbilt tender from what I can tell.  Seaboard had 3-4 varieties from full-Vandy to semi-Vandy, coal and oil types.

Try to find a drawing and photos if you want accuracy.  I'm still not sure about mine, but the drawing above came out of Prince's book on the Seaboard.

Bob D, very nice...total scratch job!

Yeah, multiview drawings are scarce and style variety is widespread per each railroad...so that makes it more fun - there's heavies and light versions - I'll swing towards a light version this time. Maybe next time I'll try for a 6 wheeled truck heavy.

Bob, I made the tank using a piece of PVC pipe, the rest styrene and some brass bits.

I mounted the speaker on the inside of the sloped surface of the coal bunker after drilling holes in the sloped sheet.  I covered the bunker with a piece of dense foam rubber with "coal" hot-glued to the top surface.  I can easily pop out the whole coal load and it doesn't affect the sound much at all.

Scratchbuilt, with real rivets:

I used PVC for my G gauge tender...handy stuff. I scratched the buckeye truck and resin copied it, and used dress maker pins for the rivets{alot of them}...it turned out rather nice.

Solid or tubular rivets...darn sweet either way!

great projects guys. I built one for my 225E, need to get the paint to match the engine. A prewar tank car frame,broken 2671 body, some PVC pipe, and some details.

Nice...I want coal Vanderbilts on all my locos, from 0-4-0's up,  less the tank engines....that is going to be a long project of duplication, with C&O Mikados as the inspiration.  Like my cabooses, I want the tenders to fit a "theme".   On my freelanced fictional road,  I don't have to exactly adhere to a prototype. I was interested to learn on here that the Seaboard was a large user of them. 

That is very cool!  I model SP and just about all of their locomotives were oil-burners.  I have a coal-burning 4-6-2 Pacific for another road name that I want to make into an SP Pacific.  It's very hard to find a scale Vandy tender.  If I provided the materials, would you be willing to build me one?  Matt

How about the Vanderbilt tenders that K-Line made? If they are not scale, they are pretty close to it.

When I built mine I asked Ron Dettmer a bunch of questions.  Here's a photo of his Vanderbilt tender:

Now that's some fine rivet work...pains takingly so, but it makes a nice difference when ya do. Now-a-days folks can buy the Archer dry transfer rivets and just stick them on with little muss and fuss....hmmm....time to search for Archers site!

I have one of the K-Line Vandy tenders and they are not scale.  Matt

I've never seen one of them...could you toss us a pic or two...or three.

Bob, if it's any help, Micro Mark carries the stick-on rivets.

For that Pacific, watch for the USHobbies 12,000 gal SP tank.  It is very close.  The 160c tender was also used on the heavy Pacifics, and they are plentiful.  Of course, if you can get somebody to build one for you for free, that is a bit less expensive.  It takes me around 20 hours to build a tender, start to finish.

NICE!!!  Who's 6-wheeled trucks?  We need more sources for trucks

I've come to appreciate brass a bit more since I got that Williams/Samhongsa brass USRA mikado I used to make the Q3.  Solidly built and a good weight.  I'm using the brass USRA tender on my 4-6-0 project and it's very sturdy.

I second two motions here:  We need more trucks, and I'd like to see a picture of

the K-Line Vanderbilt.  I would buy the Lionel Vanderbilts currently available only

with a couple of roadnames of their starter set 0-8-0, if they had sense enough to

offer them separately.  K-Line is the only brand of separate sale tender I ever saw

in a shop, and that was a box type.  Never saw a Vanderbilt.  K-Line was an innovator.

Bob2, those are commonwealths, right?

Yes.  PSC has some bargain truck kits - they come without wheels, some assembly required. The best Commonwealth, in my opinion, were CLW, no longer available.  I am not sure how compatible they would be with 3-rail wheelsets with big flanges, but I bet they could be adapted.

Last time I bought a PSC kit it was under $30 - a true bargain for a pair of sprung trucks of this quality.