Although at the time of posting this, I haven't had much ability to do much modeling, I stumbled upon some photos I had taken while back of one of my other HO side projects.
(The list of my projects seem endless, don't they?)

Some of you may recall from a LONG while back this concept:
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/2632275/

This was LONG before I bought an Athern/Roundhouse Old Time 2-8-0 for myself, but thought it would be an interesting bash to make. Well, years later, it is finally on its way! This photo was taken earlier this year and I had somehow forgotten about it. :shrug:

By technicality I now have two Athern/Roundhouse 2-8-0s. The first being my AT&SF 772 and the second being the one shown here. WAY back in Oct of 2012... shoot, it's been almost exactly a years since I acquired this! :D Anyway... Back in Oct of 2012 I took a trip to GA to visit SRM for a train robbery event, some of you may recall. As I was one of the robbers. ;p

Well while there a former friend had given me a box of parts, a body shell and chassis to an old Tyco 4-6-0 and the chassis seen here. He had been inspired by my concept mentioned above and tried to make the conversion. Though it turns out that the IHC body shell doesn't fit too well on the Roundhouse chassis. I held onto the box of parts for a good while and it wasn't until well after moving to Georgia did I decided to try and do something with it. Just for laughs I did a test fit of the Tyco body shell on the 2-8-0 and low and behold, it fit! Well sort of...

The boiler was too long so it had to be shortened. The smokebox had already been shortened so that was less work for me. It was a difficult job because the body shell had layers of paint caked on that had to be removed before I could make any alterations. When that was done I cut the smokebox off behind the first boiler band and then cut a section of the boiler out. I then used plastic welder to fuse the parts back together.

I used flush cutters to remove the cast on air compressor, which was an eyesore if you ask me. However that's when I found out that the plastic of the body shell was VERY brittle! On one cut with the flush cutters not only did I remove the air compressor, a huge chunk of the running boards went with it!! After cursing loudly for a few minutes I calmed myself down and then went to repair the broken part. Thankfully the running board section broke off in one clean piece. I continued to trim the broken part of any remains of the cast on compressor and then fitted the section back onto the body shell. Again I used plastic welder to attach the broken section and applied the welder a few times. Once dry I sanded off the remaining sheen and residue. It looked like as though nothing happened!

In order to hide the motor I elected to make the locomotive have a deckless cab, meaning the backhead nearly passes through the cab itself. I used a section of receipt paper tube to lengthen the back of the boiler and then used clear plastic, welded to the tube section to smooth it out. I would have preferred white styrene sheet, but I didn't have any on hand. Although in the photo it looks crazed, but actually there was minimal crazing of the plastic. The look is actually from me roughing up the smooth surface with fine grain sandpaper so that when I paint the backhead the paint will adhere better.

Sadly this is not a current photo of the project. The boiler has since been painted and a pilot reattached to the front of the locomotive. I still need to find some select detail parts, such as a smokebox front, headlight/headlight bracket, cab, check valves, backhead, and cab details along with a few other things. The domes shown are from my own Tyco Rogers "1890" 4-6-0, but I had custom tuned brass copies made for $10, $12 total after shipping. The smoke stack came off of an IHC old time 4-4-0. The tender will eventually be re-lettered for the Empire River & Western railroad, a fictional class 2 regional running from Colorado, Utah, and into Arizona.

Right now the project is in storage, but I hope to get it out soon and start working on it again. I'll take some more updated pictures then! Well I hope you all like it! I will move this into scraps at some point. Please do comment if you fave! ;p