Building the B&M R1 4-8-2

[mmagliaro]

I scaled off a good side-shot photo of a brass R-1c from brasstrains.com, and scaling from the driver diameter of 73",
I get 38' 3" for the tender length.  My Berkshire tender is just about 40'.  (This is just the body length, not counting
the beams or the couplers).

Scaling off a photo, even a large, blown-up, well-scaled model, is always dicey, but it seems mighty close.

[chessie system fan]

FWIW, Mainline Modeler has plans of this in one of the steam plan books.  I forget which volume.  It has both tender styles too, though the water bottom style is found in the berkshire plans. I need to make one of these models for B&O one of these days.

[jbcz]

This is equally questionable, measuring from the B&M line drawings I get about 42'3" as the length of the R1A-C tender body.  The Bachmann J class body looks like about 43'4" when I measure it.

[daniel_leavitt2000]

Bringing this topic from the dead.

I have restarted several projects in the last few months: the Conrail OCS, generic steam parts castings and finally this too.

The tender:
Photos coming soon, but I settled on the Con-Cor/Riv Berk tender. It is a good match for the six axle R-1-A tender. The Riv tender uses Buckeyes on a centered kingpin. The R1 used 6 wheel Commonwealth frames. These have much shorter axle spacing.

For these trucks I have 3 options:
1. Bachmann trucks from their Northern Vanderbilt  tender. These trucks have two different ride heights because the front truck shares a kingpin hole with the draw-bar. Also there is no electrical contacts. I started works on these, adding .008" bronze contacts. Unfortunatly, I broke the fragile brake shoes. Since I had other options, I set these aside.

2. Kato or Scale Trains fuel tender trucks. These both have the brake piston on the outside and this is a glaring inaccuracy.

3. Tender trucks from the FVM Hiawatha. Not the best-axle wipers means only one truck collects power from each rail. Also the kingpin is off center. But the trucks are still very free-rolling and I went with these.

The chassis:
I ended up ditching the idea of using the Bachmann Northern chassis. The length is just too out of scale. I can't justify a kit-bash if the model is going to be more than 5 feet too long. I ended up getting a Bachmann J on fire sale and will be using the chassis. The running gear matches as does the general size and proportions. A LOT of cuting and griding was done to narrow the chassis below the walkways. The shell was stripped of any usable parts and discarded.

The 4 wheel trailing truck was replaced with a 2 wheel Commonwealth truck from the Hiawatha.


The Shell:
The first idea was to cut down the Bachmann Northern:


This caused all sorts of headaches.  Apliances not in their correct place, the smokestack not lining up with the cylinders. A walkway not even remotely correct.

This rough-out shows what I mean.

Ride height was also a major issue until I cut the chassis down by about 3mm.


Then I came across this:
http://spookshow.net/loco/ccj3a.html
From the firebox forward, it is very close to the look of the R-1-A. There are minor details that need to be changed but nothing massive.

And I also found this:
http://spookshow.net/loco/concors2.html

Cab just needs the forward windows filled in. The fire box looks about right too.

It looks like I can use the rear half of the S2 and the front half of the J3a to produce a pretty accurate shell.

Just placed the order with CC earlier tonight. Wish me luck.

[strummer]

..."luck"... 

Mark in Oregon

[nickelplate759]

Good luck indeed!  I once tried to bash an R1d from the Bachmann Northern (keeping the Bachmann chassis) and Rivarossi centipede tender and finally set it aside as too far from the desired result to be worth continuing with.  Plus the old Bachmann chassis ran poorly.  Looking forward to your result - even your discarded attempt looks better than mine did.

[chessie system fan]

Seeing your post reminded me to do more work on my version.  Here's where I am right now (mostly inked in so you can see it).



Here's the scratchbuilt core that I made last fall.  I'm not entirely happy with it so I think I'll do it over.



My attempt is inspired by this guy.  Anyone who scratchbuilds an entire Reading steam fleet complete with step by step photos is a hero, even if it is Horribly Oversized.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/60361449@N02/albums

[jbcz]

Before you give up on either approach with the Bachmann J or northern check these photos out.  They will not satisfy rivet counters but they get the overall look of the R1 right.  It would be hard to do better because the ATSF Northern shell is only an approximate match for what would be needed for the R1, i.e., boiler rings are off, walkways are off, etc.  I have a Gem HO R1 and these kitbashes come out close enough for a "three foot" model without heroic surgery on the shell.  As it was, I cut the shell between the stack and sand dome, shortened the sand dome, trimmed the firebox, moved the steam dome, and shortened the cab.   In both the j and northern cases, I had to shorten the mechanisms.  I used Trix trailing trucks.