This is what she started as a painted unlettered Bachmann Connie with this profile and this is what I wanted (sort of).

This is how we ended up. How did we do? Do you know the story of OLD #45?

The first thing I did was remove that tube from the stack and the bell need to be moved which

meant the sand dome moved forward. No big deal right? Those sand lines were a bugger!

There was no lid for the sand dome either and no spark arrestor (I made that out of a water bottle cap and panty hose).

Of course the headlight needed to move to the top of the boiler.

No one told me to buy green squadron putty stock. Lets add a toolbox too! And a number boards to the boiler & headlamp.

Markers and flags too.

And the cab just did not look right so it needs to be moved back too. And the generator.

And the throttle linkages. And all the piping and fittings. And how do I mount the cab to the deck?

The curtains were made from that same pair of disscarded pantyhose and furled with fine wire tiebacks.

You can see the water glistening on the tender deck. The air tank was scratch built and the rivets are dots of white glue.

The coal load hides the on board batteries (not shown) and the sound and radio control equipment.

The Story of OLD 45 (at least according to me).

During the year of 1914 The Crystal River Railroad ceased operation and all of their locomotives were shipped to Pueblo for scrapping or?? When the D&RGW found they had a motive power shortage and that the baby mudhens could fill that need they bought 3 of them and re-numbered them 360, 361 and 375. These have been know to the railfan world for a number of years.

What has not been known (until now) is that there was a fourth baby mudhen that the D&RGW bought and promptly sold to the Rio Grande Southern for a tidy profit of $10.

This was numbered as RGS #45 and she did limited service as the rails were so light she kept breaking them. Yet she had more raw pulling power than any locomotive then rostered by the RGS. If they kept the speeds down the rails would hold together. The track crews were always kept busy fixing what she broke.

The depression was not kind to the RGS, yet the stock rush was exceptionally important to the RGS for revenue and #45 was placed in service from Ridgeway south to Dallas Divide, where a large stock siding was located. Pulling up the hill was no challenge for this  baby mudhen. As a matter of fact she could haul 20 empty stock cars up the hill.

As she trundled down grade one clear September day the old wooden cab was shaking and rattling but it was an un-eventful run with 12 cars of little woolies trailing behind. When the air brakes let go and there was no longer any train control from the rear and trundling became screeching. The brakemen jumped to the brake wheels of the cars, clubs in hand but could not slow the decent. The bleating of the woolies was deafening as they were buffeted about in those double deck cars. The crew saw the writing on the wall and jumped to safety and sure enough a rail broke on the outside of the curve and those poor little woolies were scattered all over the serene pasture land just out of Ridgeway.

The RGS was flummoxed with a busted up locomotive but really, aside from the cab, she was in pretty good shape. When the K-27 class locomotives started to show up at Ridgeway and Durango the decision was taken to strengthen the existing rail on the RGS going from 40 pound to 55 pound on almost the entire mainline. AND, number 45 was gazed upon with new eyes. She was heavy but now was now able to run at will up and down the entire line with more freight than any engine to date owned by the RGS. Not even # 41 or #42 could compete with her raw strength at the drawbar.

Once the decision was taken to re-build her, the old girl was fitted with extra air tanks for those brakes, and a “new” old metal cab from a scrapped D&RGW standard gauge locomotive. All the work was done in the Ridgeway shops so the cab had to be shipped in from Grand Junction.

She worked until the fateful year of 1949 when it was determined she could no longer compete with the K-27s and the Geese. Just not enough and yet way too much. Scrapped without ceremony there are no pictures of the OLD 45 but you should note the striking similarity to #455 after her wreck on Dallas Divide. It seems the shop crews may have had a little practise before #455 cracked up on that same curve on Dallas Divide.