Rough Drawings

The following pictures and line drawing, are of the diesel / electric locomotive that I am currently building. The loco will be built in 3 inch scale, to run on the common 7½ inch gauge track. This works out to being a narrow gauge loco, that would run on 30inch "tramway" systems (in real life, that is).

These are pictures and may take a minute or two to load. This page was last revised on 2/22/00.

The Rough Sketch

This is a rough drawing of the engine. The loco will be 6 foot, 2 inches long, coupler to coupler. It will be 22-23 inches wide. And the cab will be about 34-38 inches high. With the big trucks, short body and frame, I hope the final product will give a husky, narrow gauge feeling.

Card-Board Mock-up

In my decision making time, I wanted to get more of a feel of what a larger scale locomotive would be like, size wise. So, I used cardboard and cut windows and hood dimensions. Then C-clamped the material to the side of the 6 foot wood, narrow gauge gondola I have. Moving the cab section and body/hood section around, was able to get a "full size" feeling of what I might be building. That’s me in the cab, and Jerry, my 5yr son standing next to the mock-up.

A variation of Cardboard and…

Here you can see the changes and some playing I did, with repositioning the cardboard. This "version" shows a lower engine hood area, a longer hood area, and a longer cab. Part of the mock-up playing, was taking a picture of each variation. As you get to see now, I have a couple variations I can ‘look at’ or show others, instead of trying to remember what I liked and disliked, for that day in November, 1999. Film is cheap!

Mock-Trucks #1

Here you can see a mock-up of the trucks that will be under my loco. Using an old 1x4" board, I cut 19 inch long pieces, drilled holes and bolted the wheel sets and such into this mock-up. This Friday night "wild hair" idea now gives me a physical idea of what my truck size will really be. Plus has helped answer a couple questions, in the construction phase of the actually truck.

Mock-Trucks #2

This photo shows the over-head view of the truck, and allows you to see a 1x3" board used as the bolster mount on the engine frame. The two 1x2" boards show the width of the frame/loco. By pivoting the 1x3" board, I was able to see the radius the truck can turn under frame and see how the frame uses the space in the curves.

An idea of what they will look like:

Here is a picture of a diesel switch-engine truck. My trucks will be cut from ½ inch plate steel, and have a very similar appearance to this truck. The wheels on my trucks are 7inch diameter. The wheelbase will be 14 inches. The frame will be 19 inches long by 4 inches tall. With the wheels sticking out past the frame it will measure 21 inches, wheel to wheel (outside edge). There will be four springs, like in the picture.

More to come…