One ongoing project is working on building a drive for a pre-war Nason gas-electric, one in the coach/baggage/mail configuration. I had looked for one of these for many years, and finally found this one a couple years ago. It was started nicely but had never been finished — so far as I can tell it may never had a drive or floor.

I worked up a floor and had a drive truck mounted, using a floor stock piece salvaged from another persons project. “Had,” as it occurred to me to check and see if I had the instructions? I do have them, and it turns out that I mounted the drive truck too close to the end, and a number of underframe details were kind of off as well.

The instructions themselves are really interesting. The illustrations are all full sized for OO, and they cover all three versions offered of the model. There is a boxy object under the floor with a lever off it; they used a manual reverser under the floor, I will leave that detail off of course, as I’m using my standard Athearn “blue box” drive parts with a small DC motor.

I’m presently starting on a new drive that will match the original Nason in appearance. As I’ve wanted this model so long, I want to be sure it runs well.

The full instructions are below. Seeing them, I see the builder of the body left a couple details off — some pretty important — and unfortunately I’ve painted the body now. So I’ll need to ponder those details too, will likely eventually add them just to be complete.

Continue reading here to see the completed model