Sorry to those who got my first message scrambled. No idea why this happened as no attachments or pictures were included.
Like Chad, I will try and record my whistle this week. I did get whistle #2 to sing this weekend but only on the 1st harmonic. I tried several of the various sizes internal tubes that are suppose to lower the tone but could not get a good whistle. I could just hear the tone it was suppose to be with just a little steam but with any more steam all I got was steam venting white noise. Both whistle #1 (in the trash) and whistle #2 are the smaller version made to Larry Bingham plans published in SitG Vol 42. I'll continue to play with it. The requested details on the headlight are easy. Whenever I am in a Home Depot I always visit the flash lights and look for good minature lenses. Several months back I found a flashlight lense that was perfect diameter for the Accucraft old style headlight. I was stupid and only bought 2. Since then I have not seen this exact flashlight again. My first lense got too close to my micro torch flame and got all wrinkled up so I have only 1 left. Anyway, I used the lense and bulb from the flashlight and got a microswitch and 2 "N" sized batteries at Radio Shack. Everything was soldered together in series and there is just enough space in the headlight to squeeze to 2 batteries behind the lense. The switch is mounted on the bottom of the headlight. I made the top of the headlight removable and is held by 2 ea 2mm flush mounted screws in the back of the headlamp. By far the thing that took the most time was making a new slanted front face and number board out of brass as per RGS #17 prototype. All in, the headlight took a couple of weeks and I have played with the whistle for a couple of weeks. I scratched built a wide peaked roof cab that took about 5 weeks of time. I would highly recommend Vances new round roof kit as it is not an easy project to scratch. As the RGS did not have a C-16 with an original short unmodified tender combined with a round roof cab post 1903 with automatic couplers, I chose to scratch the peaked roof cab and build RGS 17 instead of attempting to modify the tender. RGS #17 is one of the few engines post coupler that retained the original short tender dimensions. All the other tenders at that time were modified and were much taller. If I had to do over again, I would have started with an Accucraft D&RGW #278 as the tender would have been suitable for several C-16 RGS engines post 1903. Regards Tom Burns Sugar Land, Texas
