Doesn't work for me. I mean, unless you have a handful of precedents where chief engineers/owners won their line a nice new loco 

Besides, aesthetically I don't much like the NG16 and prefer Garratts with outboard cylinders

But if you absolutely must have an On30 NG16 or K1, Backwoods Miniatures makes kits of both

Not worth a new post, but I am intrigued to find that Bachmann's 2-6-6-2 is not only a Central American protoype http://narrowmind.railfan.net/2662_Serbian.JPG
Serbia!
Only major difference I can see is the Serbian machines have slightly larger boilers.

The K1, while very pretty, is awfully distinctive. Beyer only made two and after that all Garratts had the cylinders outboard on the power bogies, rather than inboard. With the NG16s they also are very distinctive and too much associated with one place for me. If I want a loco it's because it fits in with where my rr is in place and era and what its purpose is. Trying to figure out a convincing account of how the chief engineer snaffled K1 out of Tasmania or had the money to get a state of the art NG16 would tax my creative abilities!

I would go for a machine a little less distinctive, like the Darjeeling Garrat http://sundar.brinkster.net/Dhr.jpg
or G42 on the Puffing Billy Rly or something from the Sierra leone Rly like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:SLGR_No_50.jpg

There is this I found which is a neat idea. It's an old shay converted to a Garratt/Kitson-Meyer http://narrowmind.railfan.net/Shay-Kitson-Meyer-Oestes.jpg  shame it doesn't show the other side so we can see if the old cylinders were left in place or how (if!)they balanced the offset boiler.

I only wish it was possible to lay track like that and still get decent operation. So many, specially narrow-gauge, modellers try to depict a run down, end of days look and manage a perfect degree of make do and mend everywhere except for the track, which is always perfectly level and perfectly aligned. Sooo much atmosphere in that photo.

Comparing the prototype with the big hauler you'd also need to fit the big hauler with much bigger drivers and even then it would be a somewhat odd looking narrow gauge version of a std gauge loco. 

re sugar cane rrs, I found this on a google a few weeks back. http://www.zelmeroz.com/canesig/resources/supplier/supplier.htm

some sweet stuff there

sorry

Won't the swimmer spent half its time swimming 'backwards' or sideways? Or is there an ingenious way of spiining the figure around so it always swims head first?

Bah, humbug

each to their own

I can see two arguments in favour of having a particular car available in ready to run, or at least ready to detail and weather

1. Your RR needs a lot of one particuar item. If you run a logging or mining RR then you'll need lots of logging cars/disconnects and miners need lots of ore cars. in fact you need twice as many as you think unless you want to be constantly loading and unloading. Being able to buy 20 ore cars or a few dozen logging disconnects will save an awful lot of dull and repetitive kit building.

2. The item you need is going to be a tricky kit or scratch build. Passenger cars and combines and to a lesser extent cabeese fall in this category, and lets not forget stock cars.

SPC coach

Nice side view of an SPC Carter Bros coach about a third of the way down this page.
http://www.midcontinent.org/rollingstock/builders/carterbros.htm
It doesn't look short to me.

I suppose if you're just playing trains in the garden, then it doesn't much matter what scale anything is so long as your happy, but I wouldn't call it railroad modelling.

There was some comparison earlier between how railroad/railway heritage organisations work in the UK and US. From what I read of it at their website, I think the Wiscasset, Waterville & Farmington Railway Museum  http://www.wwfry.org/aboutus/museum.html is very close to the typical UK preserved railway/heritage organisation. One  difference would be that while the WWF  claims to be wholly volunteer run, most UK RRs, depending on size, would have some paid full-time or seasonal staff, particularly at the very top end of management and on the engineering side.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Pennsylvania_railroads

http://www.abandonedrails.com/Pennsylvania

Something to be going with

and then you check

Google is my friend!
Glad it does what you want
Colin

That's a nice picture of the Eureka. Nothing to my mind beats looking at pictures of the real thing to inform your modelling. So many people these days seem to follow other model RRs rather than referring back to real railroading.

One thought occurred to me though, what is the photographer standing on? From what I recall of the D&S there's a 400' drop around here!

Re the locos performance, since she's carying her original boiler I think the pressure is limited to below what it was when she was built.