Back in Wayback Time when there was British made Lone Star 000 trains is when this occurred. I have always loved the Union Pacific Rail Road City of Denver ,COSF diesels with the 1930's art Deco Automobile look with their Raised cabs and huge chrome front grills. I was taking a Summer college Pottery class at the time and found that a couple of the carving tools could probably be used to carve a loco body out of potters clay which dried nice and hard even without fireing. Working from photos of the A Unit locomotives I guestimated the leingth and details,made it just slightly longer then the Lone Star powered F-7 diesel and with a hollowed (carved out) interrior to accomidate what ever mech I might devise.The Lone Star passenger car trucks available seperately looked enough like the AAR trucks on the locomotives so I thought I would use them. Painted the dried clay body with Testors paints which I then regurarly used,set the body down on the trucls,it looked fairly good, not quite as crude as I had expected. Many problems though. No pilot, lower side skirts to cover a fuel tank. Big problem though,no frame and of course the long narrow hollowed out inside space would not fit any motor. I was proud enough of it however,that I took several B&W photos with my Roli Flex camera of it pulling Lone Star cars on my mostly unscenicked first N/000 layout and sent one to MR who of course did not run it. Now if I can just figure out how to power the nice accurate N Scale size Christmas Ornimentof one of these locos from a couple of years back. Nate Goodman (Nato). Salt Lake, Utah.
