How do you know when to stop when you don't know how far you can go?

 Sorry for the long title but it seems apt to describe todays work on the locomotive.

As I have said before. One of the main problems working in English O scale in the USA, is the ordering of items from the UK. Small items can cost more to ship than the item itself costs. Larger items can be just plain expensive to mail over. 

To that end I've been working with what's to hand here in the States, things I can get from my local hobby shop. This loco is based on a AHM/Rivarossi Plymouth switcher. I intend to use solid blocks of wood as dumb buffers instead of buying nice sprung buffers from the UK.

So when it came to the W-irons, Axlebox and springs I had no choice but too scratch build them. Technically that's not true, I could have raided a slaters wagon kit I have, but then I would have had to scratch build them to replace those I stole in making this loco.

So with the snow coming down at a good rate of knots this morning, I knew I had a day free to attack the job. So having no idea how it would go, I blundered on using what I had around me.

Stage 1. I had a good stock of 1mm styrene strip and sheet and would use this as the basis of the items

Stage 2. I used the aforementioned W-iron assemblies from the Slaters kit as a guide for the measurements.
2mm x 1mm was a tad overscale, but as this is not an exact scale model, I was good with that.

Stage 3. The W-irons went together easily, and I quickly got to the axle boxes..
Simple is best, and a suggestion of them was enough. They were created by laminating some 2.5mm and  half round sections. I was beginning to get confident.

Stage 4. Was I too confident? I knew I had to attack the leaf springs next. Once again using styrene that I had to hand, I measured up the leaf springs on the Slaters kit and just glued the lengths of .4mm x 1.5mm strip together. My confidence was high so it didn't't seem too much of an ordeal.

Stage 5. Once one leaf spring assembly had been fixed in place, I felt as if there was no stopping me! I was reaching new levels of scratch building abilities.  

Stage 6. Four completed Axlebox assemblies that only need to be trimmed and fitted in place. They will do the job admirably I think.  

I have a sign on my refrigerator door. A phrase I live my life by. "Live begins at the end of your comfort zone". This little project was far, far beyond my comfort zone, having only just started in O scale and never scratch built any rolling stock in O before this loco. Sure, it's not perfect. It's not totally to scale, but it's a pretty good representation and it will be right for the locomotive, and you can't say fairer than that.