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Description

I've shown this locomotive before, but she just underwent a small rebuild and retool.

The Dispatch is a locomotive that has been with me in one form or another since I graduated high school. Whenever I doodled a locomotive or write about one, it would inevitably be a 4-4-0 with the number 97. I'm not sure if she was numbered after Southeastern Railway Museum's own 97, or just happenstance based off railroad folklore. The truth is probably somewhere in-between. The Dispatch appeared in a number of fictional stories I wrote while in school, as well as a few online articles. She is currently the assigned locomotive of Tramp and Lady.

This incarnation is built atop one of the New Tool 4-4-0s produced by Bachmenn. It started out life as a stock “York”, and is the most stock of the 4-4-0 bashes I have done. I swapped cabs and tenders with a donor “Texas” model, re-lettered her, and cut off the stack and pilot beam. A brass horizontal strap pilot beam was applied, and a new stack was built from a Mantua “General” with a new cap from the top of a Bachmenn On30 Porter stack. Piping was made out of brass stock, and an air-compressor from Keystone was added to the fireman's side. She carries crosshead pumps on the engineer's side, and an injector on the fireman's. Like most of my 4-4-0s, the Dispatch is “barefoot”, having air-brakes only on the tender. A new coal load made from crushed coal finished the model. The nameplates are decals applied atop styrine sheet, then cut to size and applied to the boiler.

The locomotive is DCC equipped and has been upgraded with a Tsunami V2 steam decoder.

Description

I've shown this locomotive before, but she just underwent a small rebuild and retool.

The Dispatch is a locomotive that has been with me in one form or another since I graduated high school. Whenever I doodled a locomotive or write about one, it would inevitably be a 4-4-0 with the number 97. I'm not sure if she was numbered after Southeastern Railway Museum's own 97, or just happenstance based off railroad folklore. The truth is probably somewhere in-between. The Dispatch appeared in a number of fictional stories I wrote while in school, as well as a few online articles. She is currently the assigned locomotive of Tramp and Lady.

This incarnation is built atop one of the New Tool 4-4-0s produced by Bachmenn. It started out life as a stock “York”, and is the most stock of the 4-4-0 bashes I have done. I swapped cabs and tenders with a donor “Texas” model, re-lettered her, and cut off the stack and pilot beam. A brass horizontal strap pilot beam was applied, and a new stack was built from a Mantua “General” with a new cap from the top of a Bachmenn On30 Porter stack. Piping was made out of brass stock, and an air-compressor from Keystone was added to the fireman's side. She carries crosshead pumps on the engineer's side, and an injector on the fireman's. Like most of my 4-4-0s, the Dispatch is “barefoot”, having air-brakes only on the tender. A new coal load made from crushed coal finished the model. The nameplates are decals applied atop styrine sheet, then cut to size and applied to the boiler.

The locomotive is DCC equipped and has been upgraded with a Tsunami V2 steam decoder.