Holy Sh*t!!! THAT is a beautiful engine! I’m absolutely blown away by that wood cab! It’s a work of art! And the tender is freaking gorgeous. The finished product will be very impressive.
Sure does Pete. Many C&S engines were purchased from the DSP&P.
Thanks Joe. Much appreciated.
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I’m really loving the continuing episodes Doc, what a joy to see the detailed steps of a master model maker at work.
So I have to ask: will you also do a build article on your OTHER prize-winning model at the convention? The Gazette had only the one exterior shot, which is great, but I know you did amazing things on the interior…
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spectacular job!
thanks for sharing
Thanks Cliff. Sure I can do a construction article on my Hunter’s Car
Great!!
I can hear brains exploding in the distance!!
Or something like that. 
Just catching up here and as always excellent work Don/Doc!
Thanks Rooster. Always glad to get your feedback.
Returning to the engine now. I’m going to move a little faster now since, like always, I didn’t take enough picture. Here’s a couple of photos showing progress on applying details such as plumbing.
In this picture you can see the rear of the boiler including the backhead with the various Trackside Details (from now on referred to as TD) parts and the brass step plate (not sure what you call it).
Most engine railings are supported by stanchions that tend to stick straight out (radially) from the boiler. In this case however, this Mogul had stanchions that were mounted vertical therefore requiring a special mounting bracket that I had to fabricate. The actual stanchion is from TD and the bracket is mounted to the boiler using 0-80 brass screws. Before you say anything, I want to apologize for that one pesky rivet that’s out of line.
Here’s the painted backhead. Behind the firebox door is a switch that controls the cab light and headlamp. A removable 9-volt battery sits in the smokebox. That’s the wire that goes to the front of the engine. I could have powered these items from the Railboss but I wanted to limit the plug connecting the engine to the tender to 4 pins.
Here’s the completed cab interior showing all the assorted plumbing. Since I could find no detailed drawings for the Cooke Mogul cab interior, I used David Fletcher’s drawings for his Porter and Baldwin Mogul interiors. Close enough, I think. Most components are brass castings from TD. The lamp is from a ½ inch scale dollhouse fixture. The lamp is from a ½ inch scale dollhouse fixture.
Before I describe the paint and more plumbing, I want to show you the front and rear door detail. As I mentioned before, all doors operate. Two use dollhouse hinges and two use hinges I fabricated.
One’s always trying to reproduce the so-called Russian Iron color on old steam locomotives. How to achieve this effect has been described to great extent and there are many disagreements. I do not intend to enter that discussion here. What I did was to paint the boiler with Floquil Gun Metal. One thing I might add is that I obtained 2 bottles of the stuff and found they were slightly different colors in spite of the fact that they both had identical color numbers. One was greyer and the other had a blue tint so, after several tests, I ended up mixing them to get the color I wanted. Below is the result.
I achieved this finish, which is surprisingly similar to Bachmann’s boiler color on their Spectrum Series, in the following steps. First, I sprayed the entire boiler with Alclad II grey primer with filler, sanded, sprayed primer again and sanded. Next, I sprayed the entire boiler with Krylon gloss black. Let me interject how and when I applied the brass bands. Etsy sells a variety of brass banding in various thicknesses and widths. They had one that fit my needs. The nice thing about it is that it comes in a roll, so it’s already bent and no need to go through that step. Before I painted and sanded, I glued on the bands then covered them with masking tape.
I next masked off the boiler section and sprayed the backhead with satin black and the smokebox with Alclad II Steel. After letting dry for a couple of days, I masked of the backhead and smokebox and sprayed the boiler. After several days, I removed the masking from the boiler bands and sprayed everything with Alclad II water base gloss paint. The great thing about the water base paint is that it gives the same hard, gloss coat without fear of interacting with the previous coats.
I was able to achieve an excellent gold effect using Krylon Gold Foil paint. The best I’ve found.
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man this is a museum build. The cab came out excellent.
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Excellent work, Doc. I love the wooden cab and the details of the backhead. The paint job really brings it all together. Thanks for sharing this journey with us.
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That is just superb Doc! You said Krylon “Foil” paint. I have been using their Gold Leaf which is the closest I’ve found to actual leaf in a spray can. If doing larger projects with my HVLP spray gun I use Modern Masters Pharaoh’s Gold which is also very nice and not brassy like most gold paint.
Lovely work, Doc.
I think that is officially a “fall plate”.
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step…fall…a natural “progression”?
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Doc, this has been a real schooling session in how to build a masterful model!
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Now that the quite extraordinary MIK challenge is completed I thought it would be a good time to finish this topic.
Let’s talk plumbing. The proper steam and air piping is difficult at best to determine for a particular locomotive. With considerable help from David Fletcher’s drawings, I was able to come up with a close approximation to what is required for this Cooke Mogul. You already saw the results in the backhead photo above. To give you an appreciation of the amount of plumbing I added, here’s a picture of all the pieces I applied. All brass plumbing was blackened rather than painted. Painted brass wire tends to be easily damaged.
The following are several photos showing the piping installed.
One small thing to add. I needed some numbers for the number plate so I asked my son if he could print some very small raised numbers for me and here’s the result.
Also, I was lucky that Ozark had a Cooke nameplate.
I wanted my decals to be as authentic as possible, so I sent pictures of the drawings I had of the original engine to my son, and he digitized them. The digitized drawings were then sent to Stan Cedarleaf (God rest his soul). Within a week I had my decals. Here’s an example of what I sent.
And here are the results.
Here are a couple of pictures of the final results of my 2-year project.
Here’s a comparison of the original with my final result.
And, finally, the thing that made it all worthwhile. For those who are interested, you can contact my son at [email protected].
Wow. Wow. I think I need to add another. Wow.
Nice work (primarily you but your son also). Well deserved award and all the praise you will get (and have gotten) here on LSC.
Did I mention: Wow!
Congratulations on your 1st place finish. I hear that’s a very competitive contest. Your engine deserved it - great work Doc.
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