I am the 7th owner of this 1-1/2 inch scale, 7-1/4 inch gauge live steam locomotive.
This engine was built by the late Jim Turnbull of Montreal, Canada in 1957. He was a prolific builder of live steam engines, and I have been told my engine was his thirteenth out of thirty six!
The locomotive is constructed from Little Engines parts. It is basically their pacific (4-6-2), but missing the front driver set and the rear trailing truck, with a shortened boiler on top.
The engine was built for Howard Crotty, the first president of the Pioneer Valley Live Steamers in Massachusetts. Howard still owned the engine in 1965 when it appeared in an issue of Model Railroader magazine. Carl Hoffman of Kitchener (or Waterloo?), Ontario was the next owner. The engine appeared in an article about his track in a 1975 issue of Modeltec magazine. It was sold to a Frenchman in Canada, who owned it for two years before selling it to Wayne McFarland of Toronto. My friend Rick Rubino of Fairport, NY, purchased the engine in the mid 1990’s from Wayne who had been pulling people in a park in the Toronto area for some time.
I acquired this locomotive from Rick in early 2006. The engine required quite a bit of work to get it into running condition. The biggest problem was the boiler leaked at the front tube sheet. It is a copper boiler, so repair was possible rather than replacing it, but the boiler did have to be removed from the chassis. The plumbing had to be completely replaced. I made many new fittings from scratch. The tender required extensive re-building.
The engine was originally built as a free lance project. I wanted to find a historical prototype for detailing and lettering so I searched many photographic resources to find a close match (there is a prototype for everything!). The last three 4-4-0 type engines built by Baldwin in 1929 were for the Chicago and Illinois Midland Railroad. This model is not an exact match, but it is close enough for me (certainly closer than a CP engine a previous owner of the model had used).
After 3-1/2 years of work, I successfully ran the locomotive on the 19th of September, 2009.
Over the next eight years, I changed and added details to match the C&IM prototype. I also ran the engine every chance I got during the warmer months in Upstate New York at the Finger Lakes Live Steamers. I traveled with the engine to the New Jersey Live Steamers and the Tonawanda Creek Model engineers.
By 2017, the engine was really getting worn out! The running gear clanked and banged, I had plumbing issues, and the old 1957 boiler was leaking again.
I rebuilt the running gear over the winter of 2017-2018. I replaced the cross-heads and many bushings and/or bearings. I was not able to get the joints in the boiler clean enough to re-braze the front tube sheet. There was some evidence the crown sheet had sagged at some point in the engine’s history. Given the age of the boiler, I decided to replace it. Fortunately, I was able to purchase a similar sized, lightly used steel boiler from another club member. All it needed was new tubes.
I re-tubed the (new to me) steel boiler in the spring of 2020. After rolling the new copper tubes, there were no leaks or weeps at 200 psi.
I streamlined the “500” during the spring and early summer of 2020. I have written an article for “Live Steam and Outdoor Railroading” magazine with all the details on the transformation of this engine. The article is scheduled to be published in the May/June 2021 issue.
Timbg Live Steam 