Bill Barnwell
Registered
Back in the early days of "G" scale Bachmann brought out a remote control battery powered 4-6-0 with plastic track and one of the want to be big box stores had about 30 of the sets left over after Christmas, the word was out, don't waste your money. So they were given a stiff discount and the feeding frenzy began, I got 2 of the sets, included track (junk) engine/tender, box car, flat car, wood sided gondola and caboose, kit bash heaven. At that time Bachmann decided that they weren't selling because there was no buildings, so in some of the sets they packed one of their O scale coaling towers and resampled the instructions with "G". Barely tall enough to drop coal in a short tender, walk ways too narrow and mini stairs. I finally dug it out of the kit that I had and checked around to see if anyone else had any experience with them, a few had and sent pictures, so I set forth on my build. I added a upper floor to the bin and beefed up the beams, to add bulk, adding bolt castings to the beams and made a building for it to sit on much like pictures I had seen. The building was made out of part of a Pola building that had been broken in a storm, made 4 buildings out of 1. Adding proper size walk ways, and ladders, using plastruct parts and floors out of flat cars for walk ways, the upper door is from a LGB European 2 axle coach, extended the chute and made pulleys out of buttons, cable from wire strands. Added a couple of out side lamps to enhance the over all look. Extended the roof of the building to 1 side and placed a hand operated gandy dance under it with plastic rail and ties, It's actually a pencil sharper and was almost 45mm track width so hence to plastic stuff, was hard to pass up for $4.95 and free shipping. The tower now stands at about 18" tall where originally it was about 10". Had a guest say he didn't think it would hold much coal, my answer was, my layout is only 20' long how much coal do you think I need? Incorporated a pull down ladder with a cage to minimize width as the stairs version would have made it an extra12" wide. The building is lit with out door solar lights with panel in the roof of the building, the exterior lights are battery powered micro mini Led's. Fun build, Bill
