Aristo Pacific bashing fodder?

Flying15

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I'd be interested to get peoples thoughts on how easily the US outline Aristocraft Pacfic could be made to resemble a British Outline A3 Pacific..

I'm not looking for prototypical accuracy, just a '10 ft rule' approximation. It looks to be untrained eye to be a reasonable basis? Being an Accucraft, it's not quite so broad in the hips.

I was wondering if the following bashing might shoehorn it into a passable imitation;
  • rebuild tender shell and bogies
  • fabricate replacement truck pilot/buffer beam
  • cab/boiler rework
  • drop running boards
  • rebuild front truck using larger, spoked wheels and reducing the wheelbase by moving the leading wheel back a bit
Your thread started me thinking
The results were posted Yesterday ‘ aristo Pacific motor block becomes Romney Hythe Pacific
Thanks for the inspiration
FE563932-87EE-4771-A4FA-B97B406FA494.jpeg
 
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DGE-Railroad

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Wow. that's absolutely fantastic! So much better than I could have envisaged
Thanks so much for the update. I missed your thread, which I'm reading now :)
 
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DGE, have you had any luck since what, January, locating an Aristo Pacific?

Noteably, it's the only Aristo Steamer I don't own due to it's poor out of the box pulling power, I have some AML ones that pull better.

Greg
 
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DGE-Railroad

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Hey Greg, no the ones which cropped up over here were almost exclusively the early plastic-rod ones, I held out for a bit and then spent the money on other bits and bobs :)

I didn't have my heart set on one to be honest as I'd have only wanted it to modify. I now think the LGB Mikado would make an easier starting point for a British Pacific conversion.

I have to confess though, I've recently entertained ideas of making a Big Boy or Challenger out of a pair of Aristos, perhaps going so far as to clone the plastic rods in metal. Again, there are probably better bases to start with.

I'll bet the AML ones look AND pull better! Is that their K4?

Darren
 
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Yeah it looks better, but the motor and gearing is problematic... came with too high gearing to pull well... it's hard to find the right geared motor.

They used the wrong motors and wrong gearing, and it's an all in one Pittman motor with the attached planetary gearbox... but I will eventually get the gearing right, and will doublehead them for my passenger trains.... (some day!)

I do like them for their looks, and they were reasonably priced, especially for a brass loco. They CAN be found on the used market.

Greg
 
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g-bits

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Assuming you can find a suitable donor, it really depends on how close to scale you want to get.

In terms of driving wheel diameter and spacing, the bare aristo block is actually a pretty close fit for the Britannias in 1/29, though the wheels are a bit small for the A1/A3's etc. Its also close to the spam cans, but they didn't have spiked wheels.

BUT, if you don't do a major rebuild, you're going to have to live with/hide excess width. The aristocraft scales out at 10ft wide (or thereabouts) over cylinders, whereas very few British locos exceed 9ft. Doesnt sound like much, but the extra width really changes the proportions of the front end, particularly when they're generally also only 13ft tall, give or take a few inches. And if you go the easy route and build 'em bigger - 1/27, 1/25, whatever, for "visual compatibility" with 1/29 stuff, then your wheels are now obviously proportionally smaller. It is possible to build plausible semi-scale UK outline standard gauge outline in G without just going for brass 1/32, but it's as much an art as it is a science.

Jonathan
 
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