Soeobo Pacific Model Railroad

The Burlington rostered 205 mikados in 4 classes, O-1 through O-4. All but the 8 USRA heavy mikes in the O-4 class were of the CB&Q’s own design. I had long wanted to model one of these quintessential Burlington engines, but wasn’t able to find one of the available brass models at a reasonable price. The answer was to make a reasonable model out of a readily available plastic engine. I remembered that Athearn Genesis made a USRA light 2-8-2 with a high headlight resembling the look of the Burlington’s mikes. A few detail changes would result in a “good enough” O-1A. I found an undecorated version at a train show to use as a starting point. The Genesis mikados have a unique design. The engine picks up power only from the drive wheels. A “tail” containing the DCC socket hangs off the rear of the cab and sits inside a cavity in the tender. There are no electrical connections to the tender at all. The DCC socket (and attached decoder) can slide in and out of the cavity when the engine ...

Living for several years in Colorado, I naturally caught the narrow gauge bug and began assembling a collection of Colorado and Southern equipment. The C&S was a subsidiary of the Burlington, so it dovetailed with my existing interests. Models of C&S passenger equipment are few and far between, limited mostly to brass imports. I found a few vintage E&B Valley kits, one C&S baggage and two Rio Grande coaches. The kits are not quite up to modern standards of detail, but they look good enough once painted. The finished models are approximates of C&S cars, while still capturing the feel of the prototypes. The coaches are flat kits with the car sides, ends, floor, and roof all cast as separate parts. The assembly sequence is relatively simple, but requires patience and careful aligning of the parts. E&B supplies plastic trucks (assembly required) with the kits, but I had a couple pairs of Blackstone trucks that I substituted.  I built the coaches mostly following...

The LMB boiler required extensive modifications to make it fit over the Walthers mechanism. The boiler is designed to fit over a motor mounted in the cab. The Walthers motor and weight sits further forward, as typical for more modern mechanisms. I used a Dremel cutting wheel to enlarge the cutout just ahead of the firebox, taking a little off at a time and test fitting the Walthers mechanism until everything fit together without interference. I also removed some of the boiler-mounted details to make access to the area easier. These will be replaced later. Photos show the cylinders of the M-4a are centered on the smokestack, and that’s how I positioned the mechanism along the boiler. This left a space between the rear end of the Walthers frame and the rear endplate under the LMB cab. I used heavy styrene strip to build a frame extension, shaping it to approximate the side bearers of the trailing truck. This assembly also serves as the mounting point for the drawbar. I attached it to the...

  I’ve had an LMB CB&Q 2-10-4 in my project backlog for several years.  It’s a brass model from the 1960s and is pretty crude even by 1960s standards.  But it and a nearly identical version imported by Nickel Plate Products are the only options to affordably model one of these signature Burlington engines.  I planned to use it as a base to make a much better looking and running model.   The most serious deficiency of the LMB 2-10-4 is the running gear.  It looks nothing like the prototype.  The M-4a’s had a very distinctive look with a disc center on the main driver and a very heavy counterweight on the 4th axle.  LMB’s model appears to use generic drivers, capturing none of this.  LMB also used Walschaerts valve gear instead of the correct Baker type.  To remedy this, I decided to repower the model using a modern chassis from a Walthers Proto USRA Heavy 2-10-2.  The driver diameter, driver spacing, and cylinder size of the USRA...

I recently built a few of my favorite models, the heavyweight passenger car kits formerly made by Branchline.  They are exquisitely detailed and are very impressive once assembled.  It’s amazing that you can regularly find them at train shows for as little as $15 a kit.  In fact, you can make the case that these are among the best values in rolling stock available today. Atlas, after its purchase of Branchline, now produces these cars in ready-to-run form and sells them for upwards of $60 each.  This means that people willing to spend time assembling the kit versions can build practically an entire train for the price of one RTR car. The kit looks a bit intimidating out of the box, but it only requires a few basic skills. If you can build a Proto2000, Branchline, or Intermountain boxcar, you can build this kit.  The essential tools are a screwdriver, sharp hobby knife, liquid plastic cement (the kind that is thin as water), tweezers, and CA (super) glue. I ...

 The Burlington’s steam era waycars (cabooses) all had a similar look: wood construction, offset cupola, and 3 or 4 side windows riding on ancient wood beam passenger trucks.  The NE-10 class was notable for being the first class of steel waycars on the Q and looked much like steel versions of the wooden ones.  They were built by the CB&Q's Aurora shops in 1930 and were the newest waycars on the system until the mid 1950's.  By the time of my modeling era (late 1940's) several NE-10's had been equipped with radios and an underslung battery box to power the equipment.   I picked up a resin kit produced by Q Connection to model one of these radio equipped NE-10's.  Walthers has produced very good models of the earlier wood waycars, but the Q Connection kit is the only option outside of brass to model the NE-10.   I've built several resin kits, and the casting quality can vary from manufacturer to manufacturer.  This kit was definitely...

Whenever I begin a new project I try to find someone who has done it before.  Someone who has built the same kit or fixed the same engine or figured out the right paint color for stainless steel.  It always helps to learn from others’ experiences.  But many times I fail to find a good reference.  Either my interests are so weird that no one else is building what I build, or they aren’t writing about their projects publicly. And so this blog is born.  If I am looking for this kind of information, I bet others are too.  My goal in creating this is to share interesting projects and modeling techniques in the hope that I can help out anyone who is working on something similar. My modeling interests heavily slant towards steam engines and first generation diesels, and just about all of my work is HO scale.  However, I believe that most modeling techniques are relevant across scales and eras.  One of my “hobbies” within this hobby is finding beat...