Class B Climax Locomotive (HOn2.5)

thingiverse

Everyone loves a geared locomotive! There are a few Class A Climax 3D models available, so I decided to try a Class B in HOn2.5 scale. Climax locos aren’t known for their high speed, so the starting point for this project was choosing a high-quality, smooth-running, commonly available N scale mechanism and building a credible model around that. This model is designed as a simple push-fit over a standard Atlas N Scale GP7 (or similar) mechanism. No modification is required to the donor mechanism at all. This is not a model for the rivet-counter as there needs to be a few compromises with such a small model designed to fit over a diesel mechanism! For example, the cylinders are static and the boiler is about a big as you would see on a Climax. The mechanism necessarily intrudes into the cab space, but fitting window glazing and crew figures disguises that to a large extent. This model (literally) doesn’t have all the bells and whistles, but narrow-gauge modellers are used to adding lots of additional details to their models to suit their personal taste. On my models, I have glued small slivers of timber over the bunker insert to represent logs, but scale coal could also be used. The sideframe overlays are optional – I glued them to the Atlas original sideframes as a way of partly disguising the modern Blomberg trucks of the GP7. The model is designed for separately fitted wire handrails – while I could have incorporated them in the print files, I wanted to make the model as robust and functional as possible for the average modeller. The model has been printed successfully many times at 1:87 scale on a resin printer (Anycubic Mono X) – no idea how a filament printer might cope with it or how it will re-scale.