I thought you might be interested in my Porter project progress (too many ‘p’s?).”

Photographs © Don Gage

The On30 mechanism was very easy to work with. I found that it ran exceptionally well after a little teflon grease was added to the gearing and light oil added to the motor bearings.

The boiler was built from pvc pipe with an .020″ styrene wrapper. The “T” boiler section was built using a Bachmann G scale porter sand dome and evergreen tubing.

The saddle tank was built from three layers of .020″ styrene over .060″ ends. The interior of the saddle tank is filled with lead sheet.

The cab itself was made from 1/32″ aircraft plywood, dimensional lumber and scribed siding while the backhead was detailed using Ozark Miniatures and trackside details as well as a few scratch built components.

The figure is a modified SLM figure. Couplers are Ozark’s rooster pockets with bits of brass wire for links, and brass escutcheon pins.

The unit runs very quietly and has amazing pulling power for its size. The unit was able to pull 4 white metal 7mm scale side dumps up an 8% grade on an 8″ radius curve.

The model was inspired by Jim Favre’s Porter.