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No that's it. My boiler certificate lapsed during Covid and I have not had the time to arrange getting out to the track to re-certify.

There are at least 8 vidoes of the A3 at GGLS on my channel. It's also been to SVLS and Train Mountain.

@@3henry214 Yup. Was most unfortunate. It seemed like the engineer wanted to stop short of the crossing but was not so.

Hi there

+Matt Schuette Most people don't look at it this way because when you factor in the amount of money you put in across 4 years of building it's easy to get lost. I did not purchase everything before hand. I built by section as Kozo shows and only purchased what was needed for each section which normally never totaled more than $250. Toward the end of my build I discovered a local metal recycling place and the costs went down dramatically. If your are a good scrounger you can save a bundle. I'd guess that I spent less than $2500 total in materials, excluding the boiler which you will procure from a professional boiler maker (around $3k). Maybe $5k total when you factor in everything.

Thank you for not chastising me for that question, some do. I'm a planner and a budget oriented person. I joined the St Louis Live Steamers last year and I've been looking for the right loco to build and Kozo's A3 seems to be a good project for a beginner like me. I've researched night and day for which loco I should build, should I go with castings or something like Kozo's which I can make most of out of stock. etc. Would you say that the build was fairly new guy oriented ?

Fortunately the boiler part (for me) will be easy. I spent 4 years silver soldering high pressure HVAC systems for commercial applications etc. I figure if my brazing can hold back 200+ PSI and have never had one leak. I can build a decent copper boiler and braze it right up. Plus my club has a lot of gentlemen with boiler experience if I get stuck

No problem Matt, I understand. Any club environment is full of people who do and those who don't but wish they did and others who just watch. You do what you can to try to develop relationships with the good guys and ignore the rest. I've been there. The A3 may be a daunting task for a newcomer. I did it. I will admit that it was difficult for someone who had never done it. The machining itself was not the difficult part. The difficult part was dealing with reading and understanding the drawings. Because you have to continually remember to double all dimensions accept things that apply to the track gauge. Anything that is affected by track gauge cannot be doubled. You will have to calculate this based on other dimensions. Fortunately Kozo's 1.5" frame drawings are correct. There are things you end up having to design yourself because the data just isn't there. Things like the valve gear yoke which sits across the frame. I made some parts 2 or 3 times before I got them right. On the flip side, I can't say you wouldn't go through the same thing if you were building say an Allen Mogul or Chloe. You get drawings and castings but you still have to figure out how everything fits together, so ..... six and one half dozen of the other. The advantage with the Allen would be that many, many people have built it over the years. Also, you have to factor in if you really like the loco enough to build it. I personally think that it's cute as a button but many don't feel the same and so if your gonna put the work in you might want to think about that. You'll save a ton on the boiler if you DIY and it sounds like you have the skills so more power to you. I wish you luck. Keep in mind that Kozo's 1.5" boiler shown in the back of the book is a low pressure design that I do not recommend. You'll need to figure out what you want to do about that. Ask around. I have videos of the running loco on my channel so check it out if you haven't seen them.

+littleevan99 Evan, once you have your dead centers accurately located, everything becomes rather easy; at least for me. Your dead centers are the most important thing. I didn't like the way Kozo specified how to do this. He uses a metal template with a slot for the rear crankpin. Unfortunately this process assumes the model was build exactly as he describes which is not reality. I set dead centers the old fashioned way as is described in many steam loco books from the turn of the century. Basically using a scribe to mark both dead centers. Then you can follow Kozo's instructions which in a nutshell is, at either dead center the valve will just be opening the port. As for direction, I didn't really care that much how well the engine ran in reverse but I did do a quick check just to see that it wasn't really bad. It was good enough that I didn't take it into account. Good job on your Clishay :) Saw your video. Very nice job!