I’ll start by stating the obvious. This is an LGB^® Porter. I purchased this locomotive for two reasons. I wanted to add a short automated line to our garden railroad and I wanted to try tearing a locomotive apart. The price and size of this locomotive made it the perfect choice.

The trick to this locomotive was the addition of sound for under $10. I purchased a sound kit from Transtronics, part number EM-105. Unfortunately they do not seem to be stocking it any longer. I believe I had previously seen the same kit available from other hobby electronics distributors. The kit requires soldering and wiring, but almost no electronics knowledge if you wish to build it as described in the included instructions. The kit included a printed circuit board, all the necessary board components, sufficient wire, a battery holder, switch and small speaker. There are four different sounds on the circuit that can be triggered; a chuff, a diesel, a whistle and a bell. Only one sound can be activated at a time. I used the kit supplied cheap plastic speaker and mounted it inside the smokestack. Naturally this meant sacrificing the smoke unit, but I never use them on any of my locomotives anyway. The stack acted as a nice sound enclosure and amplified the sound quite a bit. I did have to add a styrene band around the stack to hide the joint created mating the underside of the speaker to the stack. This is not high quality, all the buzzers and bells, sound but rather a minor step up from Bachmann factory sound. The important thing to me was that children and non-railroader visitors are entertained. The circuit board is buried in the boiler with the rest of the stock electronics. There was ample room in there.

I repainted the cab exterior with a spray can of black paint. I chose a gloss that I matted down with dullcote after all the decals were applied. I wanted this locomotive to look worn, but in good working condition. It is intended to generally service a mining operation, so I figured it would be dusty and have a few nicks and dents, but I didn’t take it all the way down to a “rust bucket” look. I started the rusting process by priming the cab with spray can primer. Then I brushed on blotches of boxcar red and craft paint brown in the areas that I would ultimately expose as rust. I covered portions of these spots with Play-doh^®, and then spray painted the cab with gloss black paint. Once the paint was dry I was picked the Play-doh^® off exposing the “rust”. Some of the Play-doh^®, or at least its oils seemed to crack and bubble the black paint. The accidental result was quite pleasing to me.

The interior and window frames were hand painted green with a craft store acrylic paint. . I cut the rear driver side window out, painted its trim and reinstalled it overlapping the front window so it appears to be slid open. Once installed I realized that the window looked like it was hanging in space, even at 10 feet, so I glued up some Plastruct strips to create an L channel as long as the length of the two window openings. Once dry, I painted it the same colour as the interior and glued it in place.

The existing valve handles and Johnson bar handle were also painted using the same craft paints. I reused the LGB^® installed sticker pressure gauge, but painted the needle red. I chose to use the existing label because it was fairly large and I wanted some detail to show. The glass and frame around the gauge were created by finding a clear tube with an inside diameter the same as the diameter of the gauge and a clear bottom to it. My tube formerly held a large drill bit. I painted the wall of the tube prior to cutting it down to size with a gold paint. The extra length gave me a handle to hold while painting. Once dry I cut the bottom 1/8” from the bottom off. The bottom acts as the lens. The underside lip gives the gauge some nice depth.

I cut a hole in the roof just below the actuator for the whistle and threaded a very fine craft chain through it and attached it to the whistle. I formed a small ball with Squadron Putty on the end of the chain inside the cab for the driver to pull on. The handle on the bell pull is simply a piece of insulation stripped off some wire and threaded onto the thread I used for the bell chord. I dry brushed some flat black, grey and brown paint on the roof to weather it down.

What really needed to be changed on the Porter were the plastic bumpers. I replaced them with oak pieces. The new bumpers were stained with Ebony by Minwax^®. I really like how black this stain is and intend to try it on a bridge or trestle in the future. I struggled with a method of attaching the new bumpers firmly enough to mount the couplers to, particularly since I have very few metal working tools. In the end I took the original plastic mounting details for the front bumper, turned it upside down, cut the webbing and front portion of the plastic bumper off. This left me with a flat plate molded to the mounting brackets. I next cut width off both sides of the plate, leaving just enough space for a small screw on each side. I chiseled out a pocket in the back of the wooden bumper to accept the plate. The remaining bracket was painted black then a couple of holes were drilled so the bracket could be screwed to the wooden bumper. This mounting technique worked so well that I repeated the process for the rear bumper. Kadee^® couplers were added from and rear. I wrapped the front bumper in styrene strips and Ozark NBW castings. The rear bumper was deliberately made as three separate pieces so the lumber was a little more in scale. The opening for the rear coupler pocket was left quite wide so that in forward pulling operation there would be enough swing to use the locomotive on 4 foot curves. The front mount works on 4 foot curves as well, but less reliably so I only use the front coupler on my mainline.

I added the winch, which is an Ozark Miniatures^® kit 0124, on the front of the locomotive for no other reason than I thought it added some interest and made the model look a little different. I like Ozark kits very much and this one was on exception, however my kit was missing the shaft necessary to complete the winch handle so I made one from some rod I had laying around. It was also challenging to keep the sidewall holes aligned and square such that the winch would turn freely. As an aside, I would have fewer operational problems if I glued the rope down under tension, but my son likes playing with the winch so I left it functional. What happens in practice is that the coil loosens up; the hook comes off the eye and snags. I have taken to putting a small wooden wedge in the eye to hold the hook in place when running the locomotive. Ultimately I will drill a very small hole in the side of the winch to accept a locking pin for running. I painted the flywheel red, thinking that in reality that might be done to keep fingers away. I then chipped and sanded some of the paint away to expose the bare metal. I brushed some patina on some but not all of the exposed bare metal to add hints of rust. The frame was weathered using the standard dunk in patina method. The angle iron frame used to mount the winch to the bumper was made from strips of stiff metal I had laying around. I didn’t have any styrene thick enough to build a frame stiff enough to hold the weight of the winch. I replaced the rope supplied with carpenter’s string (for a plum line). The string was rubbed with various browns and yellows to achieve the desired worn rope colour. I used a drop of “glue” to hold the end of the chain to the winch. The eye bolt used to store the hook is the loop cut from the chain used for the whistle.

I used the same gold coloured craft paint that I used on the body of the pressure gauge to paint the headlamp lens frame and whistle.

I stacked a load of split wood cut from branches of a Maple tree inside the cab and scattered some wood chips on the floor.

The engineer is a Woodland Scenes^® figure A2536, Ernie the Engineer. To change his look a bit, I glued cotton from a Q-tip Elmer’s, to his face and then used a very dilute wash of light brown and grey to colour his new facial hair. This tip came from Phil Greer at MyLargeScale.com. Using a white glue and water soaked tissue, I created the rag in his back pocket. For realism, I should have repainted his clothes darker shades, but I found that he was more noticeable in the dark cab if left as is.

All of the lettering and logos were made on Testors^® decal paper and an inkjet printer. They are fine for my locomotive that is only exposed to minimal bad weather. I don’t suspect they would do well on a building left out year round. They came out alright, but I don’t think they would work well if I had a tougher background colour than black to match.

As yet installed, I built a second electronics kit which is an RF receiver. The clear receiver is mounted in a lantern that will hang from the rear of the cab. I wired the output of this circuit to the coil of a small relay with both a normally open and a normally closed contact. The normally closed contact is wired to the chuff sound. The whistle, to the normally open, thus when the sound card is powered on the unsynchronized chuff begins. If I trigger the remote, the chuff drops out, but a bell sound is activated. I anticipate that weather will significantly affect performance. If the sun is bright and hits the sensor, there are false, but fun unexpected triggers of the bell. Also very bright days may negate the remote’s ability to trigger the sound.

The locomotive, Ozark details and figure were all purchased from two of our very good supporters, Ridge Road Station and AC Trains.