Large Scale Central

Lidgerwood load

Digging through a junk box a couple days ago and ran across this gear cluster that has been kicking around here for years waiting for something to happen to it. Looking at it i thought that sure could be a drum/gear assembly on a donkey engine, hhhmmmmm. I have no memory of what the cluster is actually out of, for some reason i’m thinking gas pump,maybe?

Anyway I cleaned it up and hit it with a little paint and thought it looked usable so started digging for other pieces. Found the old wood flat that was in good shape so built a shipping skid for the “engine” and mounted it on the car. Seemed to need something more so scrounged up some PVC pipe from the barn, turned it down on the lathe and made a boiler shell and put shipping closures on the openings, built a skid and mounted it to the car.

I got the idea from a friend that used the guts of a burnt up Makita battery drill and made a very convincing flat car load. I think this will make an unusual and conversational load for the Shasta Pacific.

Lidgerwood produced a lot of donkey and other hoisting and lowering engines back in the steam days. the story behind this load is that it was shipped from the factory in New York on the standard gauge then transferred to a narrow gauge car in the Redding Yards for the trip up the mountain where the South Fork Timber Co is putting in an Incline and this will be the Lowering Engine. The rest of the equipment, cylinders, ash pan, flue, and piping are on another load.

Thanks for taking a look

Rick

Cool looking load, Rick. That is a serious roller and gear assembly. You might be able to move the world with that thing (https://www.largescalecentral.com/externals/tinymce/plugins/emoticons/img/smiley-wink.gif)

So when will the "Incline " be finished ?

Great idea for a load Rick

Impressive looking whateveritis…(https://www.largescalecentral.com/externals/tinymce/plugins/emoticons/img/smiley-wink.gif)

Great repurpose

Really cool idea Rick! I’ll have to dig though my scrap piles now and see what gold I find.