I have the chassis of an aristo pacific, and the siderods, smokebox, the ladders boiler shell, some other bits I also have an extra Aristo Mikado motor block So I have to make something out of this stuff. I tend to like east coast prototypes, and especially the Reading, which ran through my hometown I was thinking of this, the Reading T1:
Now the Reading T1was a really big engine, and the drivers on the Aristo mikado are much, much too small. The T1 had 70 inch drivers and the Aristo has 55 inch drivers. So speaking as a guy with little experience, would it be possible to make a “light” Reading 4-8-4, downscaling everything to more or less match the smaller drivers, or would it just look too silly? I like the Wooten firebox and the arched window cab; I like the pseudo streamlining, because it looks to be easier to model. The Aristo drivers scale out to 60 inches in 1:32, still too small but less so. Maybe a 1:32 model of the T1? I’d have to fake up the boxpox wheels of course, it’s my railroad, I can make whatever I want, but I wonder if some more experienced modelers would have a sense of the results? I could also try something else, like a Reading 2-8-0 or even a 0-8-0 like this:
But there are no plans or measurements for these that I can find. The pictures show the 0-8-0 just festooned with piping and airtanks: a hard slog Or an 0-8-0 camelback, which the Reading ran a lot. I don’t like the camelbacks all the much though I suppose I could make an imaginary 0-8-0 streamlined like a T1…