Before and After

I put together a few comparison "before and after" photos of my large scale trolley and my large scale steam locomotive.  I've been wanting to do this for awhile but never got around to it.  Having just working on the trolley again, I figured it was a good time to capture some "after" photos and then compose "before and after" comparisons.

In each comparison photo, the top photo is the train in its stock condition from the factory before I did any work on it while the bottom photo shows the same train after I rebuilt it, repainted it and added details.

So, this first comparison photo below is of the trolley.  I purchased the trolley a little over a year ago and immediately started planning for an upgrade and rebuild.  It was not running well when it arrived at my door because the motor had a split gear.  I immediately replaced the motor with Bachmann's replacement drive but, disappointingly and unexpectedly, the brand new assembly still ran quite poorly.  It was better than having a split gear which was the original problem but it still ran very poorly and sounded like I would end up with another split gear within a couple of hours of runtime.  Consequently, I decided to replace the whole motor assembly with a different brand and then figure out how to install it underneath this trolley.  This new motor and gearbox assembly ran very, very smoothly so the extra cost was well worth the upgrade.

Then I added electronics to control the trolley via Bluetooth using my tablet or cellphone.  This was a major electronics upgrade which included sound.  The stock trolley had absolutely no sound.  Now I had realistic sounds and realistic slow speeds.  Better yet, I installed a battery inside the trolley (under the roof) so it now runs on battery power rather than power through the rails.  This means there is no need to worry about keeping the rails clean enough to provide smooth operation.  The trolley is now powered internally.

Then I painted various parts of the trolley, added skirting, replaced the front and rear bumpers, removed the original hook (toy-like) couplers, and added steps.  

Honestly, the comparison photo does not do the rebuilt trolley justice.  The rebuilt trolley is worlds better and looks great!

I also put together a comparison of the large scale steam locomotive that I had just rebuilt for our new garden railroad.  

This giant locomotive was not running at all when I purchased it at a train show ten years ago.  I got the locomotive, tender, three freight cars, and a small circle of almost unusable track for only $40!  My original plan was to just use this train as a shelf display.  I figured I would repaint it and add details just like any other model but then just display it on a shelf.  It would have to be a big shelf but that would require less room than a model railroad for trains this size.  At the time, I had no intentions of ever building a garden railroad in our backyard.

A couple of months after purchasing this locomotive, I tore it down to see why it wouldn't run.  It needed a bit of work but I quickly got it running quite smoothly but it was running strictly on DC power with only a dim headlight and a toy-like chugging sound.  It was very toy-like in every aspect including its molded-in bright color scheme.  Regardless what I would do with this locomotive, I always knew it was destined for a new paint job.  

Once I got it running surprisingly well, that got me thinking about other options such as a small garden railroad.  It would take another ten years or so before I was determined enough to build a garden railroad and start rebuilding my motive power for this little railroad.

In a matter of about a month during this past summer, I completely changed this toy-like locomotive into a more classic narrow gauge locomotive with realistic sounds, lights, more details, and new electronics.  This steam locomotive also runs on battery power just like the trolley and is also controlled via Bluetooth so that is a major plus too.  (Thanks to SoundTraxx Blunami electronics.)  

I've always been drawn to realistic looking model trains as opposed to toy-like model trains so I spent some time weathering this model to look like a well used narrow gauge locomotive...  and I think I succeeded!  My newly rebuilt narrow gauge ten-wheeler doesn't look anything like the way it was when I purchased it and that is a very good thing!

This last couple of comparison photos is of the cab of this giant large scale steam locomotive.  

Over the years since I purchased this steam locomotive (ten years ago), I've been purchasing detail parts as I would come across them online.  Little by little, whenever I found something that looked like it would fit well on my locomotive, I collected quite a few parts.  I knew that the cab is where I would do the most detailing on this model. 

The original cab was boring and there was absolutely no room for an engineer in the cab.  The boiler backhead was one piece of molded black plastic.  This boiler and backhead extended all the back to the very rear of the cab leaving no room for an engineer and fireman so I cut it forward a bit.  Now I had room for the engineer and fireman.  I added some gauges.  I added a diamond plate floor.  I added a plank ceiling.  I added an overhead light.  I added window frames.  I added knobs, levers and tools.  I painted details and then weathered it to look realistic.  

Below is another comparison photo of the cab from another angle.  I really love the way this cab turned out!

Below are a few more photos of the cab upgrade.

First is a photo of cutting down the thick molded sheet of plastic that formed the windows of the cab.  All of these windows were molded as one piece rather than ten separate window panes.  This one molded piece then snapped in place on the inside of the cab in one big "U" shape...  covering most of the inside of the side panel, wrapped around and across the front panel, then to other side panel covering most of the panel.  I cut each window out as a separate piece and then had to reinstall them individually.  After I installed the "glass", I then cut and installed window trim around each window.

This photo below shows the red oxide primer on the shiny black plastic backhead.  This was the first step to get rid of that shiny toy-like appearance.  It looks better already!

After I cut the boiler shorter by about three quarters of an inch, I installed the diamond plate flooring and the newly detailed backhead.  You'll also notice some new gauges on the boiler that I added.  I painted those tiny gauges by hand with the help of my laser printer.

And, here is the illuminated cab viewed from on top of the tender...  and the engineer fits in there quite well now.  I didn't install one window pane so I could have the engineer's arm out the window...

I couldn't get anything done on the house this summer because our neighborhood was torn up while they were installing a new water main through our entire neighborhood.  Then they had to connect to our house and I had no idea which side of the house they were going to be tearing up so I had to wait for them to get to our house.  I didn't want to renovate one side of the house only to find that they were going to have to tear it apart while connecting the water to the house nor did I want us to get in the way of each other.  That big water main project was finally completed this Thanksgiving week...  finally!  It was a long summer of torn up roads and one problem after another with a lot of unknowns along the way.  

In the meantime, I spent this time working on building a garden railroad in our backyard including rebuilding and weathering a bunch of trains for this garden railroad.  I got a lot done and the results are looking quite good!