Empire State Express – Status Update

As a result of some repainting at our house and the subsequent furniture moving, we went through a shuffling of my carvings to bring out some of the previously unseen pieces and retire some of those that had been in the curio cabinets for some time.

As a result of all of the shuffling, some of the shelves were repositioned and room was left on the top (eye level) shelf for the Empire Express Locomotive and Tender that I spoke about making.  

When I later checked back into my blog to see when I last posted about it,  I was shocked and embarrassed to see how long it had been.  This fact and the now empty shelf space waiting for a Train model galvanized me into resolving to do finish. 

For the record, I did get most of the locomotive done before I shelved the project temporarily - see the photos below.

In the left rear view you can see the air pump, drive rods and the roof of the cabin.   I used a piece of 320 grit sandpaper for the roof – rough side up, I’ve done this before.   Once painted black, it looks pretty much like roll tar paper. 

Obviously, I still need to do some additional painting.  The “real” Empire State Express was all black and to be perfectly correct the model should be, too, but let’s face it, Black Locomotives are boring :-) so I plan to use some color to make it more interesting.  Yeah, it’s not historically correct but it will be more eye-catching in the curio cabinet.

The front side view shows the cowcatcher and the brass steam and sand domes, bell and headlight.  That is about as much detail as I plan to add, although the final locomotive may have an Engineer on board.

The next post will be a "how to" for making train wheels.  Stay tuned...