From what I've read, the real SP #1 was considered a lemon anyways. 

O is so large it's not hard to scratchbuild stuff with styrene.  I don't know why you couldn't make new sides and ends for an existing Bachmann car, plus a floor and interior with Grandt Line or similar seats. 

Athearn made O-scale trains until the mid-1950s, when they were discontinued.  They reappeared in 1970 when the tooling was purchased by Pacific HO and went through several hands into the 1980s.  The die cast trucks were not re-used, to reduce costs.  The kits were metal and wood and included only a 40' box car in three variants (wood sheathed with wood sides, aluminum sides, and metal sides), 50' DD box car, and an excellent 40' steel reefer.  I have a few of them on a strip of O standard gauge track on my layout. 

They'd be helpful for scratchbuilding and bashing purposes, too.

Worth noting Grandt Line sells an end beam and railing kit, but the rails are finer diameter than the Bachmann parts. 

eBay actually did a dumb thing here.  Make your primary shipping option free - pick up in person, and you pay no fee.   Anymore I list a lot of things that way. 

Have to think with the time and money in the tooling for the On30 stuff, if Bachmann quit, someone else would take it over.  Price would probably go up and runs would be smaller. 

Bachmann will sell you spare headlights for $8 a shot.  Alternately might be worth watching eBay to see if anyone sells their extras. 

The hopper actually is the same length as the Bachmann On30 boxcar.  They're not hard to re-detail, the biggest issue with them is the molded on grabs on the end - you might have to cut the support beam out and move it over when you add a wider ladder (or new grabs) to the shell.  But it's a good basic body which doesn't have too many overpowering crude or poorly sized detail issues.   You do have to make up a bolster to get them to sit at the right height.  Once painted they don't look bad at all. 

The Flyer boxcar suffers from the issue of the gap in the ribs for the roadname to be screened on.  The tank car may be okay, I think some would want to smooth the end pieces and redo all the brake parts on the underframe with better detail. 

The flatcars are hit and miss, some are really plain crude castings, some are even a pressed wood material (Korean War era), others are cast and have decent detail but can be harder to come by as a cheap junker.  I would check the number on the side of any AF car by a value guide before I painted it up. 

I put one on the layout because I picked it up cheap and where the table wound up was right over the seam of two "domino" layout sections. 

I think the 2-8-0 just fit, but I've long since sold both of mine.  The 2-6-0 fit, the Forney, both 4-4-0s, and of course the Shay and Climax.  2-6-6-2 is of course too long.  I had a 4-6-0 here by accident but I didn't take it out of the box before I sent it back, but I suspect they're too big. 

However I did find if you want a turntable that is long enough and don't want to cut a hole in your table's top, there is a precident for a turntable that actually sits on top of the ground with the track ramped up to meet it.  Several pictures in the Catskill Mountain Railway book show it.  I'm figuring to make one using some Micro Engineering HO 30' girder sections.  It only needs to be about 12" to fit the 2-6-6-2, if the couplers and pilot overhang a tad that's okay. 

I suppose a guy could cheat and make such a table on the deck of the Atlas table, and hide the base of it... the ground would rotate with the deck but that might be an acceptable compromise.

Since posting I looked at the directions and I believe the boiler would have to be sectioned, perhaps the best place to hide the seam would be right at the cab front.  The drivetrain itself uses a universal shaft between the worm gears and would be pretty easy to remove.  If you can drill and tap to relocate screws, it should be relatively easy, I still think the hardest part will be extending the frame for mounting a pilot truck and the pilot itself, unless you put it on just for decoration and don't pull any cars with the front coupler.

McHenry made some replacement couplers intended for Rivarossi/AHM HO passenger cars, which have a really long shank - there's a variety for the 6 axle cars and a variety for 4-axle cars.  I think you could drill a new hole and shorten one to work on the rear of the Forney.   Droop will be an issue if it's too long though. 

Anyone else pick this up?  Nice article on the Argent Lumber 3' gauge steam operations in the mid-1950s in South Carolina.  Although 3-foot, the engines are all pretty tiny - and all still exist, including an 1891 Baldwin 2-6-0 originally built for a Virginia line, that now runs in Mt. Pleasant, Iowa.  (I mention it since Bachmann seems to be partial to Baldwin products....)

Bought a couple of Gilbert American Flyer S gondola bodies for a buck each.  Grind the ladders off, cut the steps off, replace with O, mill down the truck bolster, insert a piece of tube in the outer most set of holes, drop on a set of the steel frame trucks, add couplers, paint, and bingo.  Width is fine, length isn't overpowering, particularly if you run the larger engines like the 2-6-0, 2-8-0 and 4-6-0. 

You can do it with the hopper car body, also, although they work out to kind of a wierd length and could stand some rivet detail.  Also, they'd look better changing the brace the ladder mounts on so they still match up. 

Some of the 600-series link coupler Flyer cars have virtually no value, worth $5-$10 in mint condition, so there's no worries about cutting one up. 

The Lionel Scout boxcar might also work, it's similarly proportioned and doesnt have the lettering strip on the side the Flyer boxcar does.  Again nearly worthless.   

They just have pins at the ends to hold them on.  Lop the pins off one end.  If they sag, some super glue or ACC should hold them fine.

Seems to me the hard part would be re-installing a front pilot of some sort.  The rest should be pretty straightforward, I don't believe it requires the front drive wheels to be attached for it to run.  They're going pretty cheap on eBay if Favorite Spot is still running them.   I got a guy to sell me one shipped for $129 a while back, no sound, but hard to go wrong there. 

Wonder if the spare set of drivers would work for me to make a working 2-6-0 out of my static plastic kit?  Haven't had much luck finding an IHC 2-6-0 for a price I want to pay.