Remodeling JANE,
a construction article by Martin Goericke.

Complete with drawings.
Email Martin, or visit his web site.


Scared to scratch Your expensive Steam-Locos?  Take BRANDBRIGHT´S JANE! She´s a cheap lady. It was my first Steam-Loco and a good practice for beginning. Later I purchased some ROUNDHOUSE Locos and forgot about that little dwarf. Two years later I was looking for a steamer to pull my MARKLIN-MAXI rolling stock but the ROUNDHOUSE Locos are in the wrong scale. So I decided to abuse JANE. It is a small enough loco to pull a 1:32 scale train if You change her appearance a little.
 

1.    The first thing You need is a Tender. In Figure #1 You can see the one I was building. It is simply made from brass-sheet You can cut and bend into the desired form. Structural parts and the frame for the wheels are made from sectional brass (L 6/6). The coupler at rear is a standard MAERKLIN GAUGE 1.  Fill the tender with small pieces of wood and add some details as You like, maybe a dummy filler or some handrails.

2.    Next point is the cabin. I designed a new front-sheet with two smaller windows than before (Figure #2) for a better 1:32-look. Now screw some L6/6 frames to the sides to mount the roof on a hinge. The roof that can be cut as You prefer and bend to fit the new front sheet. Rivets are made by Hammer and a Nail. At least just screw some L6/6 sectionals into the corners of the existing rear cabin sheet. Remove the handrails before. Connect them on top with a piece of curved brass-sheet to support the roof at rear. Distance between tender and loco should be at least 20 mm to negotiate 600mm radius track (Figure #3).

3.    And now: paint it all black! Have you ever seen a grass-green loco? I did´nt. If You want, add some new handrails on top of the sidetanks and paint them black to look like pipelines. The loco has a tender now, so they could contain some air-pressure pumps, sand boxes or stuff like that. 

 
PS.: I replaced the coupling between loco and tender. The kind of joining You see in the pictures above can´t  negotiate with any curves on a track. The new design of the loco-side buffer is shown in Figure #4. The possible displacement for the tender buffer pin is now about 18mm...: it work´s!