Scot's Accucraft Ruby "angel" built with "steamclass 2004" at mylargescale.com When Tom Farin suggested a "steam class" to coincide with the release of the new Accucraft Ruby kit, I was all over it! :) mylargescale.com is building quite a library of excellent model building classes, starting with Dave Fletcher's original "masterclass 2001", then the Mason Bogie class, other "MLS-ers" stepped in with a figure making class, rolling stock and structure scratchbuilding classes, and now Tom's steam class.. Check out the classes and articles here: http://www.mylargescale.com/articles/masterclass and here: http://www.mylargescale.com/articles/articles     The Accucraft Ruby is a popular "entry level" live steamer. simple, inexpensive, yet fully-functional and very fun! when accucraft announced they were coming out with the Ruby in kit form, many people jumped at the chance to build a real live steam engine for a very good price! The basic premise behind "steamclass 2004" is that the Ruby is HIGHLY kitbashable..meaning it can be easily modified into an infinate number of forms and shapes! So with a large number of willing participants, the class was underway. (and still on-going! and new participants are always welcome!) click here for the class itself: Live Steam class and many builder's logs and discussions can be found here: masterclass forum live steam forum        So, the first question for each model builder is.. what to build? I have always been fascinated with the variety of "Inspection Engines". Most of the North East railroads had one or more of this type of locomotive. They were the "Presidents engine", used by the President of the railroad and other big-wigs to tour and inspect the railroad in style. The "inspection engine" was always the most opulent locomotive on the railroad! As it should be of course, thats only fitting for the President's personal locomotive!                   Most of these engines were "home built" by the railroad itself, in the railroad's shops. and thus there was a huge variety in forms and styles!  There is only one survivor of the type. the Reading Railroad's "Black Diamond". at the National Transportation Museum in St. Louis. So could a locomotive of this style be built from a Ruby? why not! just need a nice cab of some sort. I have always wanted to build a model of the LV's "Dorothy" and will someday! but she wouldnt work well with a Ruby chassis.. what else? While searching the internet for photos of inspection locomotives, I came across the webpage of Fall River Productions. They are building a live-steam "Emilia"! So I sent a note to John at Fall River, just to check on the (unlikely, I thought) chance he might have any extra cabs he would be willing to sell.. he had one! a "test" cab.. so we made a deal, and the cab was mine! thanks John! This cab became the basis of my entire project.   Using the Emilia cab as the basis for a bash, I played around with a few design concepts with photoshop. originally I wanted to do something like this: This is more like the traditional "North Eastern" type inspection engine, with the fancy cab covering most of the locomotive. but there are 2 major problems with this design. First, it would place the Ruby controls in the "back room" of the cab, leaving no way for them to be manually controlled with the cab in place. (im not considering RC right now.) second, having all the heat of the boiler *inside* the cab might not be good for the cab..so from a practical standpoint, this design just doesn't work. So I went this this concept, more along the lines of the prototype Emilia. The photoshopped rendering above is the prototype emilia cab, rear truck, domes, stack and headlight superimposed on a Ruby boiler and drivetrain. looks good! its not going to be a literal model of the real Emilia, since the wheel arrangment isnt the same. its basically a freelance inspection engine using the Emilia cab.   Go to page two. construction begins!