Hold on… What’s going on here? Oh my Goodness…

Something has snapped. I am actually thinking about dusting off the Penn A3 project. Wow! Is it a dream or am I retired? Oh yeah, I am retired now.

I have the Kozo Shay, Climax and Heisler live steam locomotive how-to project books on my shelf as well as the Pennsylvania A3 Switcher. Are they ALL possible now?

Ha! They are possible but probably not all probable. But I never say never.

I have decided to stop chasing the buck, even with my on-line e-store “Ramblin” Dan’s Store” (RDS). I want to spend my time making things in my shop. RDS will hang together for a while but I decided not to try and increase or even maintain the e-business. It has always been a very low profit and I ran it more for the experience of operating a business.

Any for profit “Business” I do will probably be with my silver work (Lost Wax Casting) as I really enjoy working with very hot liquid metal. Of course the skill can be used for making small brass locomotive castings.

I started the ¾” scale project because Kozo provides excellent guidance in his books and the size of the parts are reasonable. The drawback is where to go to run the locomotive. I think there are club tracks in the Houston, TX area, but nothing in the Dallas area that I know about.

That has made me consider Gauge1 which has many various scales involved with that track size. Generally, it is used with any scale between 1:13.7 (7/8N2 or M scale) to 1:32 (Number 1 Scale)

The 7/8N2 grabbed my attention because it is only slightly bigger than ¾ scale (6/8) but runs on a very common gauge track although this is 2-foot narrow gauge in prototype. Most engines modeled in this size are therefore “critter,” very small industrial engines but with tons of detail. “Forney” style engines are also built to 7/8n2 scale.

I will probably never run a ¾ scale engine, but it is the construction that is the hobby. The fact it can run can make it a collectable, worth more than the metal from which it was built. (scrap value)

I feel I can stay with ¾ scale. I actually designed my machine tool acquisition so I could work in this size with little to no problem. Of course smaller is always an option with the same equipment. I will never say never to working in any particular size. It’s nice to have a free choice.

What do you think? Time to get back on track?