The design for Dinkey Creek & Buttonwillow Number 2 came about in 1988, after I saw the first two switchers Charlie Schlosser, from Ventura, California, built from LGB 2017 0-4-0s. His American style styrene cabs transformed the little European locomotives into renditions fairly credible for an American railroad. A photo of one conversion appears in the August/September 1992 Outdoor Railroader. But Charlie's engines all had tenders; I wanted an O-4-0T. (The "T" suffix means the tender is "built-in".)

THE COLLABORATION BEGINS

So it was off to the drawing board. First I examined dozens of photos and plans of 0-4-0 locomotives. Around the turn of the century, Baldwin Locomotive Works built some switchers close enough in appearance to the 2017 to allow a reasonably acceptable freelance model. I used LGB's line drawing of a 2017 as a guide, replaced the straight stack with a Baldwin-style diamond stack, the "cowcatcher" with a pilot beam and footboards, the European domes and hardware with their American counterparts and, of course, the cab. When Charlie saw the plans he gave me his little twinkle-in-the-eye smile and said, "Yeah."

Charlie is a retired master machinist. He has built full size working steam and diesel locomotives, scores of models in virtually every scale, and has skills I could never hope to approximate. We agreed he would work on the major assemblies, including anything requiring metal work, and I would do the nit-picky stuff in keeping with my heritage as a small scale modeler. Charlie also does a lot of HO scale modeling so, as it turned out, he did his share of the picky stuff, too.

First we attacked the cab. The original idea was to remove protrusions and unwanted details, then to glue on a .020-inch thick styrene "veneer". Charlie cut all the pieces, impressed hundreds of rivets, and used a solvent-type cement to attach them. When he had finished, he telephoned me. "You'd better get over here and look at this," he said. "I had a little trouble with the glue."

An understatement. The solvent had warped and crazed the styrene so badly it was unusable. So, along with a new, scratchbuilt cab, Charlie made a pair of side tanks from .060-thick styrene sheet and laminated .020-inch thick panels with rivet detail over the outside of each. He also made the top of each tank removable so we could add lead weight. He attached a Trackside Details tender hatch to the center of each tank lid and, since he is Charlie, he made the hatch lids operable. The tanks fit perfectly in the depression between the running boards and his new styrene cab and screw on from underneath.

Next, the boiler. Should we modify the existing one or build it up from scratch? Ultimately we decided a new boiler would look better and require little more work than removing the domes and cast-on detail from the LGB boiler and refinishing it.

Charlie chose a length of PVC pipe of an appropriate diameter and turned down one end on a lathe. He impressed rivets in a .010-inch thick sheet of styrene, wrapped it around the turned-down section, and glued it on. He cemented a couple of narrow strips of .020-inch thick styrene around the larger part of the boiler to represent boiler bands. Then he fashioned the smokebox front.

He went back out to the lathe, chucked in some hardwood dowel-ash, I think-and turned a boiler face. The invisible part is a perfect press-fit into the PVC tube and extends in an inch or so. Charlie inserted escutcheon pins around the outer edge to represent rivets. They line up perfectly with the rivets on the side of the smokebox. He drilled a hole in the center and stuck in the number plate from the 2017. (Incidentally, the center of the number plate is red. Charlie's trick for achieving a smooth, even color is to chuck the number plate into a Dremel MotoTool, dip a brush into the paint, and touch it to the spinning number plate.) HO scale track spikes represent the smokebox door fasteners. I built up the hinges from styrene strip and rod, being sure to score the rod to represent the joint.

Charlie applied a sealer to the wood. Now that the model is painted, nobody even suspects the boiler face is wood.

ADDING THE DETAILS

Charlie had cut an opening in the front of the cab the same diameter as the PVC tube he used for the boiler, so the two fit together perfectly. Attaching the front end was trickier. LGB holds the front of the 2017 boiler to the chassis by means of the smokestack. Its long metal smoke fluid reservoir fits through mating holes in the boiler and chassis, then a nut holds it in place underneath. Why not attach our boiler the same way? Charlie clamped it in place on his drill press and bored a perfectly straight hole from the top, about half an inch from the front edge. He built up a boiler pad (the part between the underside of the boiler and the top of the chassis) by laminating together sheets of styrene until the boiler sat level, centered it, set the boiler in place, inserted the drill bit through the hole he had just made, and continued on through the boiler pad. The stack fits right through and bolts on from underneath, just as LGB designed it. And it is LGB's diamond stack, of course.

He also drilled a small hole in the boiler face for the headlamp wires. We used the 2017's headlight and bracket.

All the other hardware is from Trackside Details; Pete Thorp must have seen me comin'! We used his small cast brass domes, the TD-41 bell, TD-42 whistle, TD-18 pop valves (the "little whistles" in front of the real whistle), TD-9x brass air pump, something or other to represent the injectors on either side of the boiler, and TD-31 Baldwin builder's plates. We also used a pair of his TD-21 handrail stanchion sets. I had planned to install most of those parts but Charlie beat me to it. He left me only the injectors (I actually drilled my own holes and attached the parts with CA), but Charlie had pre-bent the piping. Thank goodness. I'm very clumsy at that.

We repositioned the LGB leaf springs from the top of the running boards to the underframe, the correct position for any self-respecting American locomotive. Charlie used insulated electrical wire to represent the sand lines and ran them down to holes exactly matching the tops of the underframe's cast-on sand lines. We removed the other bumps, protrusions, and gadgets from the running boards and sanded their former locations smooth.

THE CAB AND FOOTBOARDS

I have referred to the cab several times but so far have failed to describe it. Actually, Charlie built the whole darned thing. All I did was specify the use of real wood paneling instead of plastic under the side windows. Oh, yes. I also stained the wood.

While I busied myself with that difficult job, Charlie had traced the cab side and end outlines on .060-inch thick sheet styrene, using cardboard patterns. As I filed and sanded various components to achieve a more perfect finish, Charlie cut out the cab walls, assembled them into a unit, glued on the trim, and attached the roof. Naturally it has a working vent hatch; that's Charlie's trademark.

I cut eight pieces of basswood for footboards and Charlie provided a pair of oak strips for the pilot beams. The front and rear of the 2017 chassis seems to offer built-in spots for pilot beams. We bolted on ours with 0-80 nuts, bolts and washers. The footboards attach to brass strips. I cut them from sheet brass and Charlie drilled and bolted them to the end beams. I remember that day well. I had the flu, but we worked for 9 hours. Building up the footboards and attaching the end beams took about half that time.

The same day we also attached the coupler release levers, using Trackside Details brackets. I pre-stained all the wood with a very dilute wash of Floquil Engine Black and Diosol thinner and I blackened all the metal parts with Hobby Black. After we had assembled the parts, I had to re-color everything.

At that point we had a good looking model, but something was wrong. The cab and boiler were white, the detail parts were brass, and the underframe was black. Ah! It needed paint.

THE FINISH

Charlie Schlosser hates weathering. He says when he was younger, in the days of steam, the railroads never would have allowed their locomotives and rolling stock to "get so damned dirty, like these guys make 'em look today". So I promised the switcher would go into service fresh from the shops.

We did the painting with an airbrush. First, we dismantled the model and primed the entire superstructure as a series of subassemblies. We let it dry for several days. Then we rubbed each part with fine steel wool until the finish was glass smooth.

Charlie uses a top-secret synthetic enamel to paint his locomotives. It imparts a smooth, durable, semi-gloss finish more realistic than the majority of model paints. Only he and I know the secret but he won't tell and I've forgotten it. Anyway, on it went, three or four coats in all, even including the 2017's black plastic chassis (excluding the motorblock, drivers, and mechanism).

We hung each assembly from a hook and left everything alone for a day or two. Then I applied the dry transfer lettering and we airbrushed each part with a mixture of 50-percent Testor's Dullcote and 50-percent Testor's Glosscote to impart a realistic uniform semi-gloss finish.

Charlie reassembled the locomotive while I was at work trying to earn enough money to pay Pete Thorp for all those detail parts. He also added about ten pounds of lead weight to it. The thing throttles down to a crawl and will pull more than a dozen cars.

The model was resplendent but still needed a few touches. I spent a couple of hours building toolboxes for the running boards to hide the holes remaining from the 2017's original European hardware. I also whipped together a fuel bin to obscure the ridges on the cab floor where the annoying little plastic engineer had stood.

Charlie cemented .010-inch thick clear styrene into the cab window openings, carefully masked the two windows on each side of the cab, and airbrushed on red framing. All Dinkey Creek engines have red oil burning headlamps, number plates with red centers, and red framing in the cab windows.

The two of us admired the model for a long time. It had taken dozens of hours to finish. If Charlie were a beer drinker, we would have downed two apiece in the time we spent scrutinizing our handiwork. Charlie got up and said, "That's a hell of a model, but I'll tell you something. If you ever get another idea like that again, keep it to yourself. I ain't never building another one of those things as long as I live!" And he never has.