Kitbashing the #173 - Part 1

When it comes to 4-4-0s, I have a problem. When it comes to HO scale 4-4-0s, I am a hoarder. When it comes to being a model railroader who kitbashes 4-4-0s, I am lenient towards overall scale. What I mean by this, is simply due to their high availability, I prefer kitbashing Rivarossi 4-4-0s over more modern, to-scale models such as the new Bachmann Old Time 4-4-0.

This is partially due to the Rivarossi engines being slightly overscaled, which although not accurate, is enjoyable to me. The husky build simply means they look larger in scale, despite being manufactured out of scale to the original designs. While the #173 was indeed closer to the Bachmann 4-4-0 in dimensions, I have chosen to sacrifice this detail until I go through with 3D printing it.


To begin, I got a victim engine off of EBay. You can find these up on the website almost constantly, for a relatively cheap price. The engine I got had a small diamond stack and horizontal slat cowcatcher, which I removed. Here's how it looked when it arrived, in addition to a 4-8-0 I got at the same time. The 4-8-0 will actually be receiving the 4-4-0's original stack.

As you can tell, I have a very messy desk. The engine had the old style coupler, and the original horrible can motor the engine came with.

I first began with taking the engine apart and maintenancing it as usual. This includes cleaning all the moving parts, lubricating them, and cleaning the electrical pickups. The engine ran alright after doing all this, but it had some jitter in its roll which had to be fixed. If you're brand new to the hobby, you can easily Google tutorials on how to maintenance your engine- if anything, I'd recommend you do.

Once this was done, it was decided to remotor the engine, add working headlight, and additional electrical pickup on the tender. For fun, I put on a Bachmann On30 Heisler stack, and was surprised by how it looked strikingly similar to the 173's outline. What was originally going to be a freelanced model instantly became something else, once I saw this.

I immediately went to work, and began to scratchbuild a new pilot for the engine, as well as started considering all my options for making this engine look the best that I could.

The plan of attack was as follows:

1. Build a new pilot/cowcatcher that more closely resembled the 173's. If unsatisfied, can always order brass replacement in future. (Which I may end up doing, as it's beginning to look a bit too clunky in my opinion)
2. Lower the firebox and add airbrakes, customize the steam dome to be taller, make a new headlight bracket, shorten smokebox door to 173's curvature, and add plastic window panes to the cab.
3. Chop off the tender's flaring trim, and replace it with a sloped one. Then extend the back of the tender to make it go to the back of the frame, to allow for a extension.

Then it all had to be primed and painted, and I wanted to make it the best repaint I've done, so I looked into a lot of new techniques- specifically for replicating Russia Iron, which you can read about here. 

The cowcatcher was first designed and drawn out digitally, and then I spray glued the printout onto a piece of styrene and cut out all the pieces I needed.

Once the cowcatcher was completed (You can see my lovely Xacto-pricked-finger-sporting hand holding it to the right), I proceeded to work on getting the tender to the shape I needed. 

The tender was an interesting problem, as I needed to first remove the tapering flare that went around the tank so I could add my own, then remove the rear wall, build an extension, and THEN scratchbuild a new flare that would be sloping upwards to the rear. 

 I sanded this part of the engine extensively, so as to get the best finish that I could. The final result turned out fairly well, as you'll see in part 2 of this engine. As you can see in the photos, I've already extended the steam dome's top piece, as well as wired the headlight. I don't recommend anybody who's new to this process to attempt to wire a headlight, as even after doing it for all of my engines, I still am faced with new challenges every time I do it. Same goes for remotoring, this engine had stuttering issues even after being remotored and I had to add more electrical pickup.

 Going forward I built the new headlight bracket, which I later replaced with a thinner version made out of clear PVC painted black.

From this point on, I'll let the pictures speak for themselves (They'll have captions mind you). You should be able to decipher my steps based on the images.

Added tender load using real gravel bits and some scale coal I had laying around.

Second & Final Prime

Began Detailing Locomotive, scratchbuilt brakes using styrene
 and plastic bits I had laying around.

 I'll be posting the second half of the process tomorrow, so keep an eye out for that!