Best Of My Children have gone into the world (sniff, sniff) - Bearden Models

[u18b]

I am very thankful to Bryan Bussey.  Over Memorial Day, he looked thru his collection and found the last Bearden locomotive for this thread - of which I had no photo documentation.

It's a  Fairbanks Morse C-Liner 5 axle passenger version.  Atlas/Rivarossi made one in the early days of N scale, but it is a seriously poor locomotive.

What I did was place the old shell on a new kitbashed modern chassis.

In this photo, the bottom is Bryan's Atlas/Rivarossi chassis.    Then my stock SP shell.   And up top, is Bryan's great New Haven custom painted shell on my kitbashed chassis.   Note that the distance from the sill to the trucks is a bit high.

[u18b]

So earlier in the week, I received a package from Bryan which included the original 5 axle C-Liner.

During shipping the pilot broke off and was damaged.

The great irony of this model is that only a few railroads owned these (NYC, New Haven, Long Island, and CN) and the models were all fantasy- none were painted for these roads.



I made this 30 years ago at a time when options were very limited.

I started with an Atlas/Kato SD7/9 chassis because I could kitbash the trucks and the modified trucks would work together.
The chassis was too long, so I shortened it, cutting at the front flywheel.



The axle spacing for the 3-axle truck was perfect.   I shaved the SD7/9 sideframes and glued the Rivarossi sideframes on.



I then made a 2-axle truck by chopping the other SD7/9 truck.   You can see that the axle spacing was not perfect, but was "close enough" since my options were very limited.




Here, you can see that the truck tower and main drive gear are off center.   I cut the truck in the fatter portion up top just inside the pick up brace.



Because the front truck was now not very balanced, I added a styrene stop (white block) to prevent the truck from tilting too far the rear direction.

[u18b]

I decided to continue working on this locomotive when I got it back in my hands.

Because it rode high, I used a motor tool to shave the top edge as far as I could so the shell would sit lower.   However, the superglue was breaking free from the stress of grinding.
So I added an extra u-channel brace on the outside.



I happened to have another C-Liner, so I swapped shells, and rather than gluing the pilot, I glued a plate to the shell and then screwed the pilot to it.  I also added TrueScale couplers up front.

The back has the very old original Kato E8 couplers.

[u18b]

And here is the final (new) product.    It sits much lower now and looks much better.

A better running 5-axle passenger C-Liner.



Because the chassis is so hacked together, it is a bit noisier than I would like.  I would rate the running qualities as a B.
EDIT- now runs as an A.

This was the best I could do back 30 years ago when there were very few high quality resources.
Thanks again @bbussey  Bryan for finding this.    This was a very complex piece of work and I had no photos of what I had done.   It was amazing to look at it again this week and see that I had forgotten some of what I had done to this unique piece.

[OldEastRR]

THANK YOU for all the photos and modification instructions for the C-liner. I also used an Atlas/Kato SD7 as the chassis, but didn't include all the work and mods you listed. I will do so now for my NH version, with shell modified to NH instead of NYC specs.

[u18b]

This thread should help you make one the way I did.

But I was thinking about starting another thread where we explore modern ways to build one.