A couple of long waiting customs finished?

[Ucwepn]

Hey Guys I had an inquiry from our very own Super about my Peter Sam custom and adding rods to it, I said it was on the to-do list but it turns out I had done it and failed miserably and put it aside and forgot about it. So today I found him hiding at the turntable and dusted him off and got to work! I am very happy with split front axles now and their ability to carry "loop end rods" I'll just coin that phrase while I'm here lol. So I got the pliers out and pulled the axles out about 3mm and fitted the rods. Easy! You can see my over complex attempt at long rods which I will call version 1.0 it could not run and kept getting jammed.

Thanks to Super for that one!

Peter Sam version 1.0 (failure)

Peter Sam version 2.0 Happy engine!

Ok so Charlie is one of the most hated characters of all time for some reason but this particular version was a pile of parts in a bag just 1 hour before typing this. He of course donated his wheels to Bill or Ben so they could have red wheels . I had plans for this charlie including defacing him and using black wheels and possibly even painting him black and adding BR decals (that might still come yet). But for now here is my defaced Charlie with black wheels.

Trackmaster 1 Charlie defaced and wheel swapped

[Super]

Now that looks good. Sorry for the extra, wasted try. Now why couldn't Trackmaster do something like that?

Charlie looks great with the smokebox door and black wheels. Did you add those neat gold boiler brackets?

[Ucwepn]

Hi Super the extra try (version 1) was done last year I had simply forgot about it or was in denial or similar haha not your fault at all. That way of doing the rods is what I did for my R class custom from a loco drive Hank with good success

[Super]

Might be because he is too narrow in front but looks a lot better now. I agree that Charlie would look great painted black maybe with some gold or silver detailing along with the BR decals. Love the riveting on the smokebox.

[Ucwepn]

Yes he has allot of detail like the piping, boiler brackets and the rivets (I didn't paint anything except for the fake middle wheel) Oh and I want to do a slightly taller funnel as well as in my mind it has to be at least taller than the cab so the crew can breathe haha

[Super]

Yes, a taller smoke stack would look great.

[Ucwepn]

On this particular Charlie the smokebox holds on the water tank which can be removed to reveal a round boiler which is smooth and bare but has a large gap in front of the cab for the water tank tab to sit in. Quite an amazing loco this one and they put allot of effort in, I'll try and get a pic later

[Super]

Really? You can take the water tanks off?

[Ucwepn]

On this version of Charlie yes.

[Super]

That is so cool, Charlie is only made by Trackmaster right? Were ther more that one version released?