Alco RS-1

So, with my rediscovered enthusiasm brimming I set about on a construction project. Not the Geep I thought I might do. But an Alco RS-1. There are many pictures of the class in Don Hofsommers book on the Minneapolis and St. Louis Railroad and plans are easy to hand in the internet so I was well sorted with reference materials.

For the project I chose to covert a Hankyu 9000 power car. I had a "kitbashers set" that I had bought from Train Aids A quite a while ago. They sell units specifically for the crazy kitbashers in the T scale world who want to scratchbuild. Yes the loco will be a bit oversize and the bogies will be in the wrong place. But even in the early days of HO, N and Z there were models around that were not scale reproductions of the real thing. So as long as this looked like an RS-1 and folks recognised it as such then that was fine by me.

Above: The first task was to shorten the passenger car body. About 6mm was cut out of it to get closer to scale length. I also filed off some of the details on the bodywork along the way.
Above: Next came the addition of the cab. The sides were represented by some lengths of 4.5mm x 1.5mm evergreen strip and the distinctive roof profile was cut out of a section of 12.5 mm evergreen styrene tubing.
Above: The next task was to set about the body with some filler putty, filling in the cab and the roof to change that to a better profile. The final piece of work for the day was to add the walkway around the side and a little below floor detailing, representing fuel tanks, to hide the Eishindo chassis.

So far, so good. I'm pretty pleased with it. It has already been recognised as an RS-1 on Talking T Gauge so my aim has been achieved. The next task will be to give it a light coating of primer so I can see just how it really looks.