# Scratchbuilt Models



## santafe158 (Jul 14, 2010)

To begin with, I certainly didn't build this model as I wouldn't even know where to begin. A fairly well known Garden scale model builder located in Australia built it 20 years ago for the gentleman from whom I purchased it back in May. It is based on a Lionel G scale 0-6-0 chassis from one of their starter set locomotives produced in the late 1980s/early 90s.

That said, it was built to resemble the Mason built 0-6-4T locomotives that once operated for the Calumet & Hecla Mining Company in Michigan's upper peninsula. They were one of the larger producers of copper in the heyday of the copper mining boom up there. The C&H once rostered four of these smaller 0-6-4T "Mason Bogie" (an early form of articulated) locomotives built between 1872 and 1882. All four burned and were damaged during a roundhouse fire in January of 1887 resulting in the scrapping of the first one built immediately. The other three were shoved aside as two new and larger 0-6-4Ts were delivered from Mason that same year. They were eventually rebuilt to the configuration that the model is based upon by around 1915. At that point they were converted from their original 4'-1" narrow gauge to 4'-8 1/2" standard gauge, they lost most of the artsy Mason details and took on a simplified look that more closely resembled the two newer and larger Masons that had been delivered. When the scrap drives of WW2 rolled around, most of the "old" locomotives that had been sitting around in the C&H roundhouse were cut up. The sole survivor of the C&H's Mason fleet (and the sole surviving example of a Mason Bogie period), their #3 "Torch Lake", (arrived in October of 1873) was stashed away in its own locomotive house at the far end of the railroad in about 1933 where it would remain until 1969 when it was donated. It made the trip south to Dearborn, MI and Greenfield Village, where it remains in operation to this day as the oldest currently operable steam locomotive in the USA.






Anybody here have any cool scratch built models to share? I always admire projects such as the one above.


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