I mentioned back in April in a post about learning how the railroads served Liberty Village that a friend had gifted me half a Walthers/Life-Like Proto 2000 0-6-0 steam locomotive that very closely matches the dimensions of the CPR U3e class that worked in Toronto in the 1950’s. I say half, as he wasn’t able to give me a tender. Today, at the Mississauga Model Railroad Flea Market, I was able to buy a correct CPR Tender for the U3e locomotive. Another vendor had a brass CPR tender that was missing the locomotive. Put the two together, and I now have a plastic locomotive that I can strip down and modify the details on, and a brass tender that I can disassemble to add electrical pickups and a DCC decoder into. I’ve been assembling the needed detail parts for the locomotive and to build the tender from scratch, but now I don’t have to scratch build the tender. I can focus on the engine and the electronics to make a reliable operating engine.
It looks something like a U3e, and will look a lot more like it by the time I’m done modifying it. May be while still before it gets to the top of the to-do pile, but it will get there.
It was a nice find at the show, and at a price where using it was light years better than the time and effort to build one in this case, as when I start working on the project in earnest, it has another big head start with the tender I now have.
Musings on my Model Railroading Addiction 
What a fantastic find, Stephen. Congrats!
– Trevor
Plus, I just checked out your wife’s blog (“Cooking with Meegs” – listed in the sidebar) and that’s some bit of awesome, too. Tell her I’ve just followed it…
Cheers!
– Trevor
Thank you Trevor, yes, it was a great find, a bit of luck that it was there. And I’m very lucky to have married someone who can cook and bake as well as she does. She’ll be very happy to hear you like the blog!
Stephen
Did you sell much of your surplus stock at the market?
Not as much as I’d hoped to, the show was very slow compared to the spring one back in April. It was far to nice a day out yesterday for a lot of people to go and spend it inside at a train show.
That said, when I got home I re-organized all my storage tubs in the closet, and decided that some stuff isn’t going to stay on the sale pile, and still managed at the end of the day yesterday to have reduced the number of tubs of stuff by 1, so a bit more space in the closet at least, and a few more dollars in the envelope for layout building!
Stephen