Custom Work
Bring us the drawing.
Or the story.
We take about a dozen commissions a quarter. Most start as a photograph somebody has kept in a drawer for forty years.
How a commission runs
Nothing gets cut until you have signed off the drawing.
01
The conversation
You send whatever you have — a snapshot of a real locomotive, a sketch on a napkin, a road number, a birth date, a story about a grandfather who worked the yards. We ask questions back.
02
The quote
Within two business days you get a firm number and a build date, not a range. It holds for thirty days and it does not move unless you change the brief.
03
The drawing
Before a single board is cut you approve a dimensioned shop drawing showing profile, species and any carving or engraving. Two rounds of revisions are included.
04
The build
Three to six weeks on the bench. You get a photo off the vise before it is oiled, and nothing ships until you have seen it and said yes.
Typical range
$400 – $2,400
Most single commissions are quoted between four and nine hundred dollars.
Deposit
50% to start
Balance due when you have seen the finished photographs, before it ships.
Lead time
4 – 10 weeks
Longer between September and November. Book holiday work by early October.
What people ask us for.
A road number that matters
Engraved into the cab side or the tender flank, cut with a router and blacked with wax so it reads from across a room.
A locomotive from a photograph
Mill archives, museum plates, a builder's plate, one badly-lit Polaroid from 1954. If the shape is in the picture, we can get close to it.
A birth date or a name
Under the tender, inside the cab roof, on the base of the depot — somewhere the child finds it years later rather than somewhere a guest sees it first.
A whole private railroad
A named line with matched livery across six or eight cars, quoted as one job and built in stages so it can be given a piece at a time.
A repair or a refinish
Bring us a train that is already loved. We re-turn broken wheels, re-glue joints and re-oil tired wood — ours or anyone else's.
Corporate and commemorative
Retirement gifts, groundbreaking mementos, anniversary pieces for a railroad or a shortline. See the wholesale page for volume.
Start a commission
Tell us what you are after.
Rough is genuinely fine — most of these conversations start with someone apologising for not knowing exactly what they want.