# Vanderbilt Tender kitbash... a "Vanteen".



## jgallaway81 (Jan 5, 2009)

Originally, I bought a Mike with a vandy. Then I had intended to buy a second mike, and got a good price on the mallet instead. So now I have a Mike with a USRA tender, and a Mallet with the vandy. However, as a practical steamer, I liked N&W's idea of running canteens behind their mallets... but a box canteen with a vanderbilt tender? Uh uh. NOT a good combination. So, I started looking at other cars for use as a canteen for a Vandy. I picked up a USA tanker minus trucks cheap.. thought maybe that with the addition of the commonwealth trucks it could pull canteen duty. Was okay, but just didn't look right. Back to the drawing board. Finally, I realized that the best looking solution was a vandy-based canteen. So I disassembled the tender and began to investigate the inner design to determine what was going to be involved in the project.










The first thing that got me interested in this project was these little tabs here. There are three on each side, engaging little "ridges" molded into the upper tender shell. After getting the shell off, I noticed that the tabs and ridges on either end were nearly equi-distant from the end of the tank shell. So I got out a ruler and found them to be exactly the same distance from the ends (within the confines of the precision of the ruler I used). I couldn't believe this. So for S&G's ($#!+$ and giggles), I flipped the tender shell end for end and remarkably, it locked into position. If you do this however, you will find that the center ridge/tab set is NOT actually in the center. This comes to play when making the new tank shell. If you look at the following two pictures, you will see the shell for the canteen lined up with the tabs:



















The white strip inside will be explained later. Looking at the inside, I decided this would be a project easy to complete. The first step... a parts list:
[*]1x - A Complete Vanderbilt tender* (showing as ART-21850, 6-axle version)[*]1x - Body Shell (ART-21850-02)[*]1x - End Cap (ART-21850-03)[*]2x - Rear Ladder (ART-21850-11)[*]1x - Long Grab Iron (ART-21850-12)[*]1x - Lamp Housing (ART-21850-14)[*]1x - Light Lens (ART-21850-15)[*]1x - Rear Grab Iron R.H. (ART-21850-09)[*]1x - Rear Grab Iron L.H. (ART-21850-10)[*]1x - Side Platform R.H. (ART-21850-07)[*]1x - Side Platform L.H. (ART-21850-08)[*]1x - Water Fill Hatch (ART-21850-18)[*]1x - Long Platform (ART-21850-19)[*]?x - Short Hand Rail Stanchion (ART-21850-20)*2[*]?x - Long Hand Rail Stanchion (ART-21850-21)*2 [/list] I purchased all my parts separately from Aristo (thanks Navin!) minus trucks. However today it might make more sense to buy a 6-axle tender to start with. *2 - I just noticed that the parts nos. on the vandy tender EPD are messed up from "Bubble (24)" through the end of the list. I'll leave you to figure out that mess. To begin construction, I needed to isolate the parts of the water tank from the coal bunker.










The first cut I made was right AT the edge of the bunker. This seemed to me to be the logical place to start. Once I had a segment of tank from one end towards the middle, I then knew how much additional length was needed. This also allowed me to use the "clip" to help hold the tank to the frame. This reduces the stress on the tank shell by adding additional support to the bashed shell. The next step is to measure the amount of tank needed from the second shell. I aimed to get this cut as close to a perfect seam as possible, but in the end, I ended up sanding about an 1/8th inch gap trying to get a perfectly straight edge. Okay, now what? Well, I still needed to figure a way to merge the two... We all know how difficult it can be to glue two parts of an Aristo product together. After a little thinking and experimenting on scrap pieces, I realized that part of the problem was that the tank shell had over-spray from the painting process... there was a black mist of paint on the inside which interfered with the gluing process. My first task was to sand the inside of the tanks to ensure a clean place to glue. My next step was to find some exceptionally thin styrene... I believe I used .5mm thick, but you might be able to go thinner. I went with a wide piece, approx. 1.5in, in order to ensure a very secure glue joint between the styrene and the tender shell:










At this point, you are going to need to experiment on your parts... I can't recall if I used super glue or not, but I believe the solution was to use plastic welding solvent. The use of a thin piece of plastic was needed in order to ensure the plastic welded to the shell without the "memory" of the piece trying to force the piece to spring back straight. One the piece is welded securely to the inside of one piece, it should provide a nice tight "press-fit" into the other shell. Once you know the EXACT location of the secondary tank piece, you can weld the second tank to the styrene. If you managed to get a perfect cut, you can also attempt to weld the two tanks directly together. If you are like me, that wasn't an option. I had attempted to use squadron putty once when I cut out the "lump" from the Long tender in order to make a smooth, non-water-scoop type tender. I never did managed to get the putty smooth enough to look good, even after painting. My solution to filling the gap was (at that time) rather unique. I gathered all my scrap styrene into bits that would fit into an empty "plastiweld" solvent jar. Once the bottle was full, I dumped fresh welding solvent over the scraps and let it set long enough to dissolve the styrene into a plastic putty. Once I had a jar of putty, I lathered it into and onto the gap. The solvent in the putty helped to weld the putty to the plastic parts, and the putty itself formed a fully plastic weld between the two tank pieces. Once the putty was lathered on and the gap completely filled up, I set the tank aside and worked on other parts as I didn't know how long it would take for the putty to cure as the solvent evaporated out. The next parts under consideration are the two side walkways, the two tank ends, and the top walkway. The tanks ends are actually fairly easy... one is just as it was on the original tender. The other requires a bit of modification to it and the tender frame, which until this point, has been left stock. First, the mods I did and then some post-build hindsight thoughts.










This is the end that was originally the aft/rear end of the tender in stock form. As you can see, no modifications have been made. But make note of the two notches in the frame, at the bottom of the tank. These will come back in the after-build thoughts.










This is the "buffered" end... the two-circular protrusions molded into the frame represent spring-loaded buffers which pressed against a wearplate on the engine frame. This was supposed to absorb and eliminate any slack-action present in the engine/tender couplers/drawbars. This end required minor modification. Where the notches where on the other end, was built-up, level with the center-sill in front of that location. That had to be ground out with a dremel wheel to make it lower so that the new end-cap could fit snug, without any heavy modification to the end-cap's bottom lip.


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## SteveC (Jan 2, 2008)

Don't know if I got it exactly the way you intended it but it should be close.


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## jgallaway81 (Jan 5, 2009)

Here is that end-cap. Despite grinding on the frame, the cap still required two modifications: 1) cutting off both of the tabs that fit into the matching notches mentioned above. 2) still had to grind down a little to make the caps present an equal height on both ends.

Now, here are the post-construction hind-sight thoughts. When I ground off the tabs as mentioned above, it was because I didn't have any tools capable of punching through the tender frame and carving out the required notches. In hind-sight this is pretty much needed in order to secure this end-cap to the completed water tender. Modification to do this would require some engineering work, but shouldn't be all that hard to complete.

In the above images of the assembled tank, you will notice two very long screws running vertically between the tender frame and the tank shells. One is located on each end of the canteen, but only one is on the tender. When the tender is assembled, the end cap is very securely attached to the tank shell through the use of copious amounts of hot-glue. This took much work to remove. However, I have yet to figure out how to provide the same attachment ability. But this presents another post-construction issue.

Once the tank ends are installed, you need to tighten down the screws in order to secure them to the tank. The problem is that with the original construction, the hot-glue secured the tank sheets to the end-cap very securely. When the tabs on the cap locked into the frame notches, the completed tank had much structural security. Without the hot-glue, the tank begins to deform under the downward pull of the screw being tightened down.

In order to counter this, I attempted to thread the screw through a piece of styrene tubing cut to exact length to hold the vertical clearance between the frame and the top of the tank. Good idea except I never was able to get the screw to lock into the threaded stud on the tank when that tube was in place. I'm not certain how to accomplish this, but the gap formed between the end-cap and the tank shell in this picture from the tank sheets bulging out shows that it is necessary:










This gap is a major trouble spot because it greatly reduces the tank's holding ability over the end-cap, such to the extend that the slack action forces from a large train will knock it out of the tender.

The easy answer is to secure the cap the same way the factory did, that is, to use copious amounts of hot-glue. I'm still working on a different method, possibly using magnets, in order to allow the endcap to be easily removed for the purpose of using the canteen as a battery-car.

Once the endcaps are finished, there remains only two points to engineer to complete this project... the main walkway on top between the two water fill hatches and the two side walkways.

Turns out the top walk way is one of the easiest parts to complete on this project. Referring back to the original tender:










you can see that there are two different sized walkways on top. I had assumed that the answer would be a kitbash of the two pieces. Turns out I was wrong.










The distance between the two hatches turned out to be perfectly matched to a single piece of the large walkway. So an order to Irvington Locomotive Accessories (ie the Aristo Parts Dept) had another part delivered and that problem was solved! one last engineering hurdle to completion...

The side walkways... how to complete them? Scratch building the remaining length needed was out of my ballpark at the time... large parts are easy, but adding options for attaching them to other component takes a bit more thought. Hmmm.... well, what about welding two parts together? If the shells fit back to back, then I should be able to do the same thing for the walkways.

The trick is that you need to use a "left" and a "right" side part on each side, to account for spinning around a second tank part. First, install one walkway. Then install its counterpart so that the difference between the two overlaps. Once you know the overlap, you can trim both/either to mate, based on your preference. I recommend trimming them both so that the joint is not close to the rivit detail on either part.










Here you can see the seam created by the jointing of the two parts. Admittedly, I failed to make this seam very well. I chose to clean off the bottoms of the walkways, welded a joiner piece of plastic underneath and then weld the other walkway to that. I should have further cleaned the tops off before welding and, using some of the gap-filling putty made for the tank seams, filled in the joint, re-enforcing and securing it. This was especially made plain when you factor in that the bottom joining plank cracked and tore while the water tender was in storage.

And there you have it, the custom hacking and assembly of a Vanderbilt-based Auxiliary Water Tender/Canteen... a "Vanteen".


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## jgallaway81 (Jan 5, 2009)

Presenting the finished project:

Starting at the front end: (I used standard knuckle-couples to mate the Vanteen to the Vandy so that I could run the Vandy-straight if I wanted.)











Here are three shots of varying angle of the side of the Aux. Water Tender:





























The broken-down structure of the canteen model:











And the canteen coupled to the Vanderbilt:






























I sincerely hope you enjoyed reading about this project. I know I had a blast building the model, and recounting its construction here. Thanks for taking the time to read my presentation.

- Jason


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## Andre Anderson (Jan 3, 2008)

I like it, as you say it has the right look behind the Vanderbilt tender, like it all came from the same factory.


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## aceinspp (Jan 2, 2008)

And here it is in action making a visit to the D&S. Later RJD


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## SteveC (Jan 2, 2008)

Jason

A very nice job on both the model and on the postting.


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## Madstang (Jan 4, 2008)

Didn't even know they made these. Thanks for the food for thought. Very nice job! Impressive!

Bubba


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## silverstatespecialties (Jan 2, 2008)

Sweet! She's all set up for some hard steaming over desert mountain passes... 

Great job!


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