Lloyd, Regarding your Ruby to Forney conversion (thanks for the plug!): I received your letter and I am awaiting a shipment of link-and-pin coupler castings from Ozark Miniatures, so the cab and pilot will go out as soon as they arrive (should be three or four days). If you're going to use knuckle couplers instead, and the link-and-pin castings will go in your junk box anyway, contact me off-line and I'll send the kits right away. The truck you pictured on the Forney is often seen on eight-wheel tenders, too. Unfortunately, it's a design that hasn't been reproduced for large-scale engines, with one exception that I know of. The Kalamazoo/Hartland 4-4-0s have one in plastic that's essentially similar, and you may be able to talk them out of one as a "replacement part". But it's not that complicated a part, when you break it into its components. You could either scratchbuild the side frames or make a pattern from aluminum or brass and have them cast in whitemetal by Hartford Products. To fabricate them, you could use the Hartford or Ozark pedestal/journal castings, with the top arch cut off and bolted onto a top frame. Making the equalizer bars would be a bit fiddly, but since they don't have to work you could cut them from plastic or thin brass. There's a plan in "Modern Locomotive Construction" you could use to get a quite similar truck. The pilot truck doesn't have to do much other than stay on the track, so a spring on the pivot screw or sufficient weight on the truck is all you need. Since the journals etc. don't show, just cut off the axle ends from a metal wheel set and rig a simple carrier for them, with a pivot bar long enough to reach back between the cylinders. On my first loco, I made a similar one from two pieces of brass angle, soldered to form a long box around the axle, with a pivot bar soldered at a right angle to the middle and a couple of angle braces to give it strength. It's been working fine for five years. My philosophy in all the above is this: you should strive for a realistic overall appearance, but don't worry about creating scale model parts because there are significant parts of the Ruby, such as the cylinders, which will never be scale models no matter what you do to them. Don't knock yourself out trying to make a silk purse from it, when it will make a fine work shoe. regards, -Vance- Vance Bass FH&PB Railroad Supply Co. 6933 Cherry Hills Loop NE Albuquerque, NM 87111 http://www.nmia.com/~vrbass/fhpb/
