Hello all. It’s been too long since I’ve been online. I see some things have changed.
After having to pull up the whole layout due to a sink hole (now fixed), I was only left with a little switch yard. An attempt to do a timesaver yard. I never connected it to the original layout, so it just sat. The winery was from a MIK build challenge back in '18/'19(?).
And many times sitting on the patio with the wife, the light build finally went off.
It is time for me to add to this little scene. She thought that was a great idea since she sits and plays on her phone and I tend to get bored just sitting for long periods. The urge to build/play with trains gets me when looking at this switch yard.
My idea is to build a small diesel engine and small flat cars to switch around. The story line is that the diesel will be bring in crates of picked grapes from the far off vineyard to be processed and then it can take away filled barrels of liquid refreshments .
I just wasn’t 100% sure what kind of small diesel I should build. I have plans that I can scale down(?) for a 7/8" Plymouth (Garden Railways, 1998, Plan set #36). I am not concerned if this is UK or American. I was going to use link-and-pin or just a link/hook coupler with the small flat cars (no off the shelf coupler). Any other ideas (and links to plans) that I could look at and consider?
I was also, but later on after I get some scratch building done, was considering a steam 0-4-0T engine (like a docksider or porter or something small like that) because I have the water tower, coaling and sand station. But I figured that would be a bit more advanced for my novice experience .
I do have two 3d printers and I can print these out, but (to me) that’s cheating myself. I figured if my scratch building turns out terrible (to me that is), I can always fall back on a 3D printed one . But for now, I’d like to spend my time trying to build from scratch and learn in the process.