Santa Fe 1480 Class Atlantic

[Schraddel]

Hello,

about 3 years later this project was picked up again.


One of the bugbears was the trailing axle. There were simply 2 brass castings which are representing a rather complex structure of the prototype.





With the 1/87 model these 2 brass castings were simply fitted onto the trailing truck. But in real life the 2 horseshoe like castings and the leaf springs were fitted onto the main frame: <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://rgusrail.com/album/coatsf1819/atsf_1819_15.jpg">http://rgusrail.com/album/coatsf1819/atsf_1819_15.jpg</a><!-- m -->
As none of the 1480 Class Atlantics have survived the very similar trailing truck of an 1800 Class Prairie may be an substitute.
The axle bearings are suspended on 4 short levers which allow them to swivel sidewards. And the real trailing truck is only this fabric made out of flat iron profiles. The swivelling is very limited too, adequate for the prototype, but far too less for the model.
So my compromise is to let the castings were they are and completening the flat iron profiles were they are visible on the model. This was done here with stripes of brass and bronze. Also the castings were reworked to get them nearer prototypical lookalike.





A 3mm flathead golden white LED replaced the burnt out incandescent bulb. And in this case i used a plastic coupler on the front end to avoid some nasty milling as the the coupler box is cast on with the front beam and cowcatcher.





A bridge was made to close the gap between loco and tender. This loco has a simple boiler backhead made out of a coined brass sheet. But it is mounted far too much rearwards, a tribute to the gone old open frame motor. The cab floor is far too high. As a compromise and avoiding to rebuilt the cab new, the bridge was placed there were the cab floor should have be.





As with older brass there are made prearrangements for Kadee standard coupler boxes, the classic ones with the ears can simply be bolted on.