New guy needing some advice

[Kansascheapskate]

OK, I am just in the thinking stage here but I have a long term goal for a garden style backyard Railroad. A few years ago I ended up with a bunch of cast iron wheels, I thought at first they were mining car but some are spoked so maybe they were a park railraod. At any rate, the rail is about 2 1/8 tall and I got a hodge podge of little train stuff. They were pulling a branch line out and giving away ties so I got a semi load th inking I could cut them in half for crossties. A little big but they were cheap.

Anyway, you know what I got and why I am thinking of this now. A guy down the road has a large model of a Case traction engine his dad made back in the 50s that I was looking at. He welded his boiler up and did an amazing job of welding and grinding things to resemble castings. I don't know that much about boilers and the only one I have is an old verticle 13 tube out of a grain elevator. I bought a book from Besnon Mountian a few years ago on making your own code traceable boilers and having welded my whole life this really doesn't bother me.

I guess my question is, have any of you guys built a 2ft gauge railraod? That is the size of trucks I have so its kind of silly not to use it. The engine and boiler would be much larger but I have a source for some wheels that would scale to about what a Porter 0-4-0 would look like on a 2ft gauge. The Porter boiler is pretty small on a real locomotive but the saddle tank makes it look big even scalled down.

I have tried to research the laws in my state on home boilers (Kansas) and that is a confusing matter of its own. I am not going to display at a club, its not an antique or agriculture engine........ Any others in Kansas around here?

If anyone wants to give me any pointers about the boiler or anything else please chime in, even if you tell me I am crazy. I just want to use what I got to build a little track around a pond on my farm. If I see a used certifiable boiler I may just buy it and build an engine around it but I still like the idea of the Porter because I can have a "big feeling" engine on a small track.

Thanks

 

[twombo]

Don't know that I have any advice but It's a heck of a concept

I don't really see why you couldn't scale up the 2 1/2" Marie Estelle.

I like Porters!!

You are familiar with Ollie Johnson, right.
How big are the wheels?

The Maxi Lucky 7 was 3 3/4" scale... really not so much smaller than the little beast in your post.

If your wheels don't have bosses for crankpins, you could always use outside frame rails and cranks... on a 12 inch gauge.

Fella just up the hill here scratch built a 12 inch gauge loco and copy catted a sort of Heisler drive train. Cutest darn thing... a little crude, maybe... but he laid track on his 5 acres and takes the kids for rides.

Stores it in a little loco shed made of recycled currogated tin roofiing. You would never know it is there ... then, BAMMM!!!

To meet the guy you would never guess the talent!! A real self made engineer. Just a heck of a nice guy too!!!

Just some thoughts to stimulate the the brain corpuscles!! I like it.

I plan to lay tracking on my 5 acres in the forest.

Keep us in the loop on updates.

twombo