Large Scale Central

Redneck Engineering, AKA The Fuddy-Duddy Car Works

Don’t laugh, it’s not perfect, but it does work. I actually built this plow 3 years ago. It’s made of scrap and left over parts. The deck is from a Bachmann tender, caboose body is from Scientific Toys, lower half of the plow is from a Bachmann Thomas, top half is an inverted Bachmann K-27 plow, headlight from a Bachmann circus train, and there’s 3.5 lbs of lead and assorted metal on the inside.

Mike that is one really cool conglomeration of spare parts! As a bonus, it works. (https://largescalecentral.com/externals/tinymce/plugins/emoticons/img/smiley-wink.gif)

I won’t laugh. Being as I am a redneck engineer myself, I appreciate redneck engineering.

That’s a great Baldwin plow, few are able to catch the lines so well!

Looks like itwold fit into any backwoods operation. Looks good to me. Nice work.

John Caughey said:

That’s a great Baldwin plow, few are able to catch the lines so well!

Thanks John, but I think that’s pushing it a bit, no pun intended. I researched actual railroad plows, and while it may be close, I don’t think it quite resembles an actual prototype.

I scratchbuilt this railbus about 15 years ago. It started out life as a Bachmann circus train combine, and originally as a 2wd by way of a sawed-off Aristo motor block, with the front wheelset off of the circus train ten wheeler. It was also radio controlled on battery power with 8 AA batteries. R/C came from a Toy-Grade Nikko race truck. Worked fine, slow, but fine, but couldn’t pull any other cars other than itself. I thought it would be able to pull around a Bachmann coach, but it wouldn’t.

So I decided on Phase 2, which was to take out the R/C and convert back to track power. Again, it worked okay, but needed to add weight to the bus to get it to pull the coach, which it still had trouble doing. Purchased an Aristo Railbus short motor block, and replaced the circus bogies on the front, so now it was 6wd. Much better, pulled the combine with no problems or slipping.

Fast-forward to today. Decided to go back to R/C, since I’m now running a live steamer, and haven’t been cleaning the tracks for electrical continuity. Not worried about pulling the combine, as it looks better behind the Sammie.

Pics to follow

Mike Wlez said:

I researched actual railroad plows, and while it may be close, I don’t think it quite resembles an actual prototype.

Don’t count on it !

I learned a long time ago that there is darn near a prototype for just about everything.