I see that Greg is posting about BBT’s chassis and I didn’t want to hijack his thread.

So,

A while back I started a thread asking the driver to driver spacing on Bachmann’s K27.

https://www.largescalecentral.com/forums/topic/28971/k-27-driver-to-driver-distance

Thanks to David Maynard and Joe Zullo for suggesting I contact Barry. Unfortunately, that’s just about the same time we all where informed about Barry’s health. I hope the best for Barry and his family.

And many thanks to Pete Thornton for getting me the dimensions and many modeling suggestions.

My intent was to buy the K27 drive rods from Bachmann and kit bash a 2-8-0 form an old battery powered Big Hauler I bought for $20.00

We’ll y’all, I did.

I started with buying the side rods from Bachmann and a couple 12" brass bars and a bar of nylon stock from McMaster-Carr.

I cut up and used a Bachmann Gen. 5 chassis, I had from one of my many Anniversary chassis change-outs, machined the axle bearing slots in the brass side plates and attached it all to the chassis with nylon blocks, machined from the nylon bar.

I used the Gen. 5 motor, gearbox and flanged rear driver wheel. I also used the front flanged driver with chuff sensor contacts, of which I added two more for proper chuff timing. And two blind drivers in between. I positioned the number 3, blind driver in the same position as the middle driver on the 4-6-0 so the connecting rod would operate without any modifications. The second drive wheel back, also a blind driver, needed to have the rod pin shortened to clear the main connecting rod as the wheel rotates.

As for other modifications, I removed the air tanks from the locomotive and lowered the front running boards level with the rear running boards. I added a second air pump. new brass hand rails, an Anniversary pilot, modified a broken four wheel pilot truck to a two wheel pilot. I also added an LED light in the cab, head light and added Aristocraft classification lights, also with LED s, to the front of the smoke box. Inside the boiler, I added a Revolution Train Engineer controller and a MyLocoSound sound card, the new blue one. These continue to get better and better for a $79.00 sound card.

As for the tender, I shortened the coal load to make room for an air tank. Added an LED light to the, now offset, rear light. It comes on in reverse. I fashioned air piping and brackets for the air tank. Add a mini 4 pin connector for the speaker and rear light and reused the original two wire connector, that was originally for the speaker, to power the locomotive from a self built 14.4 volt Li-ion battery pack in the tender.

I started this build in December 2018 and the locomotive has been running for at least the past five months.

I wasn’t sure how well this would run, so I just started this project with what I had on hand and only bought what I really needed. I also didn’t want to start a build thread in case this didn’t turnout so well. Please go to my freight shed

https://www.largescalecentral.com/filesharing/folder/view/552/adam-s-pics/parent_type/user/parent_id/6586

and you can see the photos I’ve uploaded and the changes I’ve made over time. The photo above was taken today and is the latest and probably the final incarnation, until I apply D&RGW decals.

Below is a video of it running. As you can see, it runs extremely smooth and tracks nicely.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYFamBDDGPE

I’m very pleased with how this turned out. As a matter of fact, This is currently my favorite locomotive. I’ve run it for probably 25-30 hours and it just seams to run better and better. My other 4-6-0s start moving at about 18-20% on the Revolution controller. This 2-8-0 starts moving at about 14-16%.

Now I just have to figure out what I should number it. I already have a #7 D&RGW

Adam

Very nice. With all of the dead Big Haulers out there, I wonder why we don’t see more of these kind of bashes. I like the new running board configuration, it looks a lot better.

Hopefully your success at a bash like this will inspire more folks to try.

Adam,

Thanks. That bash came out awesome!

Adam,

That does look good, and seems to run well too! Congratulations.

Let me know if you want me to muddy your thread with some photos of other 2-8-0s!

Pete Thornton said:

Adam,

That does look good, and seems to run well too! Congratulations.

Let me know if you want me to muddy your thread with some photos of other 2-8-0s!

Thanks for the kind words Pete.

And please do muddy it up! I’d like to see what others have done.

Adam

OK, as you asked . .

I think you saw the chassis I built - sounds like yours is similar. Good idea on the K27 rods, though it can be difficult to drill a frame to match existing rods. I have some stainless rod ends, about 1+" long, that I got from Barry’s Trains and they are waiting for me to fabricate the coupling rods some day.

Anyway, my inspiration was the East Broad Top “Mosca”, which was a D&RGW 2-8-0 that Baldwin built and they diverted it to EBT.

It looked a bit similar to the Bachmann 2-6-0, so I photoshopped a pic of Jack Thompson’s beautifully decorated engine:

SInce that time (many years ago) the 2-6-0s have become more reasonable in price - I got one for $75 with a few broken bits which were easy to fix. I don’t think it would be easy to fit another axle like this.

So I made my own body using various Big Hauler bits and plumbing tubes. The stack is Trackside Details with a Big Hauler cap.

I also acquired a 4-4-0 cab and made new lower sides for it with the “Mosca” profile.

And that’s where it sits right now. I have many more projects to work on so I lost interest in making the running gear work. In addition, mine had 2 NiMH batteries in the boiler, and a full tender of r/c gear. Unfortunately the tender belonged to my 4-6-0 which I sold, so no more r/c or tender.

But if someone offers me another 2-6-0 or 4-4-0 for scrap prices I will take it and use the body.with another Aristo 2-8-0 tender.

This next one is a standard 4-6-0 with a BBT drive, pic stolen from Greg’s thread.

Finally, as these locos are quite long wheelbase, I would strongly suggest some play or equalisation in the frame. I left the blind drivers fairly loose so they can work up and down over bumps on the track. (They can’t go down below the outer wheels.) I added a swivel frame for the front drivers so they can pivot from side to side. Here’s a pic - the frame pivots are attached to chassis cross-members. (No idea why it has blind drivers in this shot!)

Pete Thornton said:

it can be difficult to drill a frame to match existing rods.

The way I laid out the chassis:

I took your advise and soldered the brass sides together, I scribed a line about a 1/2" up from the bottom along the length. I got 4 new drill bits that matched the K27 side rods. In a drill press, I drilled one hole on the scribed line and placed one of the loose bits in it and dropped a K27 side rod on it and used the side rod to locate the next hole along the scribed line, dropped in a bit and located the next hole and so on. This gave me perfect wheel center spacing. I used the holes in the side frames to locate, drill and mill the axle bearing slots.

All of the axles are pretty much rigid. One thing I found out was that the center blind drivers are about .20" smaller in diameter then the flanged drivers. So, like Bachmann, they don’t actually ride on the rails, they’re slightly above. I don’t have perfect track by any means and I don’t seem to have any derailments.

Adam

Unfortunately the tender belonged to my 4-6-0 which I sold, so no more r/c or tender.

But if someone offers me another 2-6-0 or 4-4-0 for scrap prices I will take it and use the body.with another Aristo 2-8-0 tender.

Aha! I just remembered (having walked past the shelf where it is displayed about 4 times today already,) that my 2-6-0 has a tender fully equipped with batteries and sound. It could easily be used to drive my chassis. Or maybe I should put another set of drivers under it? It would help if Bachmann listed the blind drivers as a spare - but they don’t. Guess I could buy the flanged version and persuade someone to turn the flange off.

I drilled one hole on the scribed line and placed one of the loose bits in it and dropped a K27 side rod on it and used the side rod to locate the next hole along the scribed line, dropped in a bit and located the next hole and so on.

Very smart. I hadn’t thought of using multiple drill bits to align the holes and keep everything straight.

Smart cookie that Adam! (https://largescalecentral.com/externals/tinymce/plugins/emoticons/img/smiley-wink.gif)

Joe Zullo said:

Smart cookie that Adam! (https://largescalecentral.com/externals/tinymce/plugins/emoticons/img/smiley-wink.gif)

Indeed.

And it occurs to me that B’mann hadn’t released the K27 when I did my chassis!