Builder: Jim Garubba (plastimatic)

I love showrods, old locomotives, and overblown engines, so this rare beauty was right up my alley.

The Gone Loco is a restoration of a prebuilt, unpainted (for the most part) unit I had picked up for a pretty good price. The only bits missing were one of the big wheel pins, and the belt/pulleys, which I was able to mock up with pieces from a Zinger engine.

Luckily, the gold/brass pieces were generally attached without scraping, so they popped off easily. I still went and stripped a couple of the pieces to remove seam lines and gave them a coat of Alclad chrome followed by gloss clear tints to kind of match the originals. I wanted to incorporate the look of some of the bygone era engines, so the body was painted Satin Canyon black and Semigloss red, with some gold BMF accents. The wheels were solidly glued together, so those are still the original red plastic.

The decals had to be redone, of course, so I took some creative license.

It’s a striking TD design. I don’t remember having the chance to pick one of these up when I was a kid, but I’m glad to have it on the shelf now.