After a bit of a delay, I managed to put a few finishing touches on my inaugural scratch-building endeavour.
I nestled a hand-held signal lantern on the floor of the front stoop:
… and put a second lantern with a red lens on the rear:
I also installed a Microtrains coupler, and shortly thereafter, stumbled upon a tiny piece of rolling stock that seemed like it could be just the thing to haul around behind this diminutive locomotive.
I found this at a train show some time ago - it was getting batted about in the bottom of a box full of used N scale track and turnouts, had lost its wheels who knows when, and had unusual formed-wire couplers, the type of which I had never seen before. The vendor willingly tossed it in with a couple of tank cars that I purchased from him, and I pretty much forgot all about it.
I posted a pic here on TRW, and folks informed me that it’s an item from the MinitrainS product line (European, I believe).
I removed the wire configurations, managed to equip it with a single Microtrains coupler, and easily popped in a set of spare wheels. Being so small, it needed a bit of additional weight, so I cut thin strips of lead tape and rolled them up to simulate a load of steel coils.
Here’s a short, hastily shot demonstration video of the final makeup, running on my workbench test oval:
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The only thing left to do is locate some white water-slide decal lettering so that the road insignia can be finalized, but I’m afraid that will be dependent upon a serendipitous find at some future train show. Other than that, I think I can call this project “done”.
