The Locomotive #1
This project was started in the summer of 2008 and completed in the spring of 2009. This was our first attempt at building a locomotive. I wanted to build the shell myself but wanted to purchase a chassis and add my own motor and controls. This led me to lawntracks and Mr. Dan Christopher. He had for sale a nice chassis for a relatively low price.
We talked about different gear boxes and ways to mount the motor. To make a long story short I mounted and remounted the motor about 5 times and changed sprockets and controllers to many times to describe. Finally I came up with something I was happy with.
The little loco pulled me my gondola and the start of our flat car around pretty slick. I was pretty happy but the vision of my railroad was far from finished.
After about six months of driving the loco with no body, dad decided to make one out of cardboard until I decided what I wanted to do.
In the mean time Dan at lawntracks.com came up with a new locomotive called the track cat. I liked the design so I asked him if he would sell me all the pieces so I could build it myself. He agreed and now I had some pieces to finally put a shell on my loco.
After a little more practice on the welder, and some help from my friend Jay I finally had a locomotive. I since added an air horn, a headlight and changed out the controls for a kit from Roy at ridetrains.net.
