i know, what kills me i did not bring my camera I would have taken many pictures and a video.

I've been working on the boiler lately. I had to scratchbuild the taper and wagontop courses, as there was nothing I could convert - although I tried heating the original wagontop course with boiling water, to tighten up its curvature. Didn't work. Now I'm working on the cylindrical first course, filling in all the various cut outs and holes. It has a lot of cutouts and holes!

I figure to post more photos when I get the boiler, running boards, cab, etc. together in a unified superstructure.

If anyone has a "beater" General tender available at a very low price, please let me know.

awesome, you can build a new boiler out of styrene or brass or some scrap steel.

I should learn how to weld stainless steel. It's a great medium for models.

i don't think it's that hard.

if i find a General tender, i will let you know.

Are you speaking of flat sheet that needs to be rolled?

yeah, pretty much.

It might be nice to have some large metal shaping tools, but I don't.

A quick update. So much mission creep! I didn't figure on messing with the frame so much, beyond the motor tower rebuild and cutting off the part behind the drivers. I recently shortened the front frame 2 scale ft., then re-lengthened it by 1' and lowered it by some arbitrary amount. (It was supposed to be 4", but was more.) It turned out very well, as the frame is just slightly above the driver axle centers.

I also wasn't planning on doing much to the plastic frontispiece beyond chopping off the doghouses atop the valve chests. Suffice to say there are a few more changes, which you'll see in upcoming photos.

As for a paint scheme, one idea is to paint it to go with my B&O General set cars. It would be a light blue and black, with white lettering. Similarly, I could do my version of the Lionelville Circus Special, for which I have all the extra cars. Another idea is to do a Coca Cola engine like the On30 model. Except, I'd do the boiler in glossy candy red over metallic aluminum. I'm still soliciting your ideas, here!