# Aristo Teddy Bear Express Surgery to real Pennsy A3A



## vsmith (Jan 2, 2008)

Aristo Teddy Bear Express Surgery to real Pennsy A3A

I picked up this lovely piece of hideousness at the BTS, its in good shape except its bunker was broken off. This is a good older version with the better drive brick. AC sold this as a tender version based on a real Pennsy A3, and as the tenderless tank/bunker A3A version. The only real problem was AC got cheap and didnt provide simple screw on water saddletanks. I decided to rework it as a real A3A which meant grafting water tanks onto the boiler, 
Some styrene and CA adhesive later:



















Here is the bunker repair:










Painting right now, more pics when it gets more complete....I'm going to need alot of paint.


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## Dave Meashey (Jan 2, 2008)

Victor;

It's looking good!

I used a similar method to graft the Aristo bunker onto a Lehman Porter.










Regards,
David Meashey


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## vsmith (Jan 2, 2008)

Thanks Dave I also have a porter like that. Seams like the bunker is better suited to the Porter but according to all the pics of real A3As that bunker size IS correct. The water tanks were all over the place. They seamed to be custom built and varied greatly. It wouldn't have killed AC to provide tanks on the tenderless version of this.


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## Totalwrecker (Feb 26, 2009)

I had no idea that the toy, er loco was so hideous! I picked up a couple of tenders years ago, that's a diff adventure, one was black and the other a tan with yellow lettering for the Teddy Bear lines, not at all like the toy loco.... I figured the loco was plain brown. Just goes to show that you never can tell.....

Nice Tank you've started.
John


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## catherine yronwode (Oct 9, 2013)

Nice work -- and can you post a "before" of the Teddy Bear in its utter hideousness and a prototype of the Pennsy A3A so we can get the full glory of the transformation firmly in mind?


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## vsmith (Jan 2, 2008)

Sorry I never took a before pic, I just started glueing stuff together, but theres a good pic from Greg Elmassian's Aristo catalog site:

http://www.aristocraftforum.com/database/?prodid=21333&year=










Got the worst of it painted over, using brush and Tamiya acrylics to cover the shell, Floquil to paint the drive rods (the acrylic paints would lock the drive rods when dry, they're too sticky) as it was I had to run the engine while painting and drying so it would keep running smoothly but also get into all the nooks and crannies.

Tomorrow will hit the whole thing with black primer. The brush paints are really just there to provide a base coat for the spray, heres the Pennsy A3A


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## catherine yronwode (Oct 9, 2013)

Ah, there's the hideousness ... and the grandeur ... i wanted to see. Now i can truly see your dedication to the project. Carry on!


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## vsmith (Jan 2, 2008)

Finally got it sprayed with black primer, evens everything out, nothing like photos to show you every place you missed.





































Looks waaaaaaay better than a week ago, still needs lettering and some weathering. Also need to replace the broken front pilot steps.


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## Sjoc78 (Jan 25, 2014)

Were those Teddy bear engines battery or track powered? Looks like plastic drivers.


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## Totalwrecker (Feb 26, 2009)

They were some kind of metal, infamous for black pitting, dirty track and eventually Aristo offered replacement wheels.
I have a original release ATSF model... when I replaced the motor I got the wheels for the price of shipping ....


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## vsmith (Jan 2, 2008)

Yeah its track powered. My speeds are really slow and my trains will be very short so I dont expect alot of wear and tear.


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