Garden Railway Forum

Over the past year or so I've been assembling a selection of IP Engineering Ezee range kits (they fit my budget and work space perfectly). I wanted to create a somewhat uniform passenger consist - like a streamliner, but not. What I ended up doing for the locomotive was bashing together a Daisy railcar with a guard`s van to create a box cab and the pieces left over formed a 1st class observation car.

Basically, I took the body of the guard`s van, minus one end and stuck it on the Daisy chassis, swapping around the unused components. One of the two kits - I forget which at the moment - is just slightly narrower than the other. I used individual planks of HO scale lumber to shim them to the same width, one on either side.

For ease of access to the batteries I needed a roof that was easily removable. I played around with a hinge system for a bit but settled on a rigid piece held in with gravity. The roof is built from scrap plywood arches, held together with stir stick braces and a very thin sheet of plywood on top.

This past weekend I finally got the whole set together and as a unit, it all looks pretty good even though the locomotive is loud as hell and got mistaken for a lawnmower (still looking into that). Sadly I don’t seem to be able to go a session without some mechanical failure or another and a hard derailment caused the main axle gear to slip, so it’s temporarily out of commission.

Still figuring out a name, though...


(Ignore the cable. It's a hold over from the track power days.)

Ive done simler conversion but on a chassic I fond in spears box.
One thing I think improves the looks of the Ezee range is to exstend the bodie sides down to the bottom of the buffer beam to form sole bars.

Jerm:55097 wrote:Over the past year or so I've been assembling a selection of IP Engineering Ezee range kits (they fit my budget and work space perfectly). I wanted to create a somewhat uniform passenger consist - like a streamliner, but not.

I like it.......

The IP Ezee range is more or less modular and there are a lot of kitbashing possibilities, without breaking the bank.

It has crossed my mind that combining the Ezee guards van and carriage would make a good trailer for the Mandie railcar.

My railcar sounds like a mobile washing machine when on the move, so it is easy to work out where it is on the track, even when out of sight.

I won't be fitting nameplates when I finish painting it, but it's nickname is 'Canardly', after an old railcar that ran on one of the local timber tramways.

The first US style streamliner in Aust was named 'Spirit of Progress'. Predictably, that gave rise to local nicknames like 'Spirit of Salts' and Spirit of Protest' for narrow gauge trains that were slow, rough and definitely not streamlined.

Regards,
Graeme

Perhaps "The Spirit of Meh" or "The Spirit of Shrug"

spooner:55103 wrote: One thing I think improves the looks of the Ezee range is to exstend the bodie sides down to the bottom of the buffer beam to form sole bars.

I have actually thought of doing that with one of my two Rapiers - probably the newer, better looking one. I do still have plenty of the thin, scrap plywood laying around...

I know what you mean about the noise.......................

My suggestion is to run the loco and tilt the motor in its mount until it gets quieter, THEN glue it in place! You can get it to run very nearly silently.................

Thats a smart looking set and the rooof is a very nice touch. A very simple solution to the noise problem is a small drop of oil on both motor bearings, might not make it silent but you will notice a difference.

Many thanks! It's back to the workbench (ie: my desk) anyways, so I'll give both suggestions a shot and see what I can come up with.