ALCO from ALCO or another 0-8-0

[Schraddel]

Thank you for the reply and feedback.
jwb, these 8000 gal USRA tenders were modeled "as delivered". The full width coal bunker was an bugbear for switching purposes as the engine crewe has to lean wide out of the cab windows to get clear rear sight.
Many roads altered the coal bunker for more visiblity backwards. In most cases the bunker was rebuilt to an narrower shape creating a visbility channel for the engine crew.
175 original USRA 0-8-0's were built, but about 1200 copies of this design were built afterwards, the last ones as late as 1953 by N&W. Most of them had narrow coal bunkers.


Yesterday i was getting nuts about a movable braking gear. My first attempt to do that.


With the exemtion of the brake cylinder all is recycling stuff, left over of 0.2 mm brass sheet from an etching frame, pieces of .1 mm copper foil, and several stubs of 0.5 mm and 0.3 mm brass wire.






You can see then burned gold laquer, soldering the brake cylinder and his pedestal needs soldering with an torch. The smaller parts could be done with an electric soldering iron. And at least i decided to glue the train line and the air line to the cylinder so avoiding damage of the electric parts inside the tender.
At least it was not possible and impractical to have a movable brake gear here in this case.


That is all what you can see in the best case when model is on the layout.

My resumee:
Yes i can made brake gear at scratch. It is even possible to make it movable. But very time consuming to build it also.
At least it is impractical. It is better you buy an lost wax brass casting of this device. Or if you need a very special brake gear built it rigid from beginning on.
My 2 cents.

Lutz