Well, at the time I was friends with Frank at Iron Horse Hobby, a store in Brea, Ca. He did a CNC milling company in the back, and when I showed him the Carey shell he said it would be easy to hog out the metal. In fact, it took him about 4 minutes to do it, and he saved the settings for other shells. IIRC, he did 4 of them for me.

Unfortunately the city of Brea wanted his building and they wouldn’t take “No”, so he’s out of business. Doesn’t mean someone else can’t do the same thing.

Then I took a U-Boat cab from Athearn, some sheet brass and a set of Detail Associates fans (today I would use Atlas) and constructed the fan assembly, topping it off with some very fine brass mesh from some kind of filter or other. Again, today I would use Plastruct.

As for pictures, well, it’s 38 years and a divorce ago, so nothing remains.

And, to be honest, with the Atlas models out there, why go to that much bother? The Batch Man is a fantastic model (even if Batch Man calls them Baby Trainmasters – they’re not). For that matter, I won’t do any more TM’s either for the same reason. And I now have fine plastic models of Erie’s, H-15-44’s. The Toothpick & Shovel is a happy railroad!

I’ve been wondering – has anyone tried to take the trucks off of a Trainmaster, put them on an H-16-44 and make a _real_ Baby Trainmaster? And did anyone ever model that one-off FM loco that’s a “P-“ sumptin or other? For that matter, did anyone ever buy one?

Also – did anyone ever figure out why the Canadian locos only had 3 fans – sometimes two on the right, sometimes on the left?

Bert