FINALLY!!! Thanks to all of you who have been waiting patiently as I jumped from one project to another and had to delay the release of these new kits. They are here, and worth the wait (I hope :-)
In the summer of '96 and again in '97, I had the joy of being able to see several narrow gauge locos in action in Hawaii on the island of Maui and elsewhere. At the time I thought these were very good candidates for future conversion kits. In fact, I now have prototypes done which are similar to these and typical of others I have seen at plantations around the world. I used designs of several different, but similar, locos to create a generic version reminiscent of all. The cabs will work on any 4 wheeler such as Bachmann, Roco, Rivarossi, etc. It is well worth the trip to Hawaii just to visit these beauties. There is nothing on this planet to compare to the experience. If you go to Hawaii, vist the LK&P (the best one) and tell them Brick sent you and pick up some of their goodies while there.
Loco prototype mounted on a Bachmann 0-4-0 switcher. Tender is mounted on Bachmann trucks but can be fitted with any brand such as Kadee, Hoffman or Grandt. The Kadee Passenger trucks look particularly good.
A closeup shows how well the cab and running boards fit the Bachmann chassis. Many details have been added and improvements made since this photo was taken.
I wanted this one to be a surprise because I wasn't sure it would work in HOn30 and there were some sticky problems with a power unit. At first, I tried to use a Flea but the cost and performance were not satisfactory. I built this prototype around a Bachmann chassis which has been shortened. It works great!!! The tricks to get it to work right are weight, weight, weight and extra pickups! The model is based loosely on the Silverton rail bus but is about 10% bigger to accomodate a variety of chassis (As shown below) and because I felt it looked too puny when scaled exactly to a prototype. The illustration is approx. 50% larger than life to show detail. The wierd paint scheme is some strangeness created when converting the Canvas design sheet into a JPEG not some hippy flashback!!! NOTE: Chassis shown IN the model is a STEAM switcher chassis, not the diesel. It is easily converted, runs well and has a spoked wheel.
Rail Bus
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