IF THERE HAD BEEN a locomotive in the movie Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, Gene Wilder, who portrayed the title character, would undoubtedly have been at the throttle of this strange-looking beast. Appearing for all of the world like three shoeboxes set down on a steam locomotive chassis, the L5 was a failed experiment […]
NO, THIS ISN’T THE review about the blue Erie 0-8-8-0. While this Triplex locomotive shares much in common with the 0-8-8-0 (blue boiler, Erie Railroad, same O gauge manufacturer), it’s got even more wheels – 28 in total! A Baldwin Locomotive Works engineer created the Triplex to balance the costs (in men and machines) associated […]
WOW! LIGHTNING HAS struck twice in one year. In the July issue we reviewed an F3 set by Williams that was the spitting image of a postwar Lionel F3. Now there’s a new addition to MTH’s RailKing line that visually also has quite a bit in common with a postwar Lionel F3. Why should MTH […]
LOCOMOTIVES COSTING $1,000 or more seem to capture all the attention today, so we went down to our local hobby shop to find some locomotives that didn’t have “Rockefeller” as a last name. We found three moderately priced diesels that model three notable periods of U.S. railroad history and reflect three periods of O gauge […]
PERHAPS THE MOST lasting symbol of the electrification era of American railroads is the Pennsylvania Railroad’s GG1 locomotive. To steal a phrase from a 1930s boxing movie, the GG1 electric is the “Winnah and still heavyweight champeen” of prototype American electric locomotives. Like the New York Central Hudson steamer, the hobby will most certainly see […]
MTH’S “PAY AS YOU ENTER” Standard gauge trolley is a reproduction of Lionel’s prewar no. 9 trolley – that’s pre-World War I, not II. Lionel first produced its no. 9 trolley way back in 1909, just one year after two fellows named Orville and Wilbur were granted a patent for a flying machine. The no. […]
MTH’s HO scale Pennsy K4 4-6-2 Model Railroader has just received a production model of MTH’s first HO scale locomotive, the Pennsylvania RR’s K4 4-6-2 passenger steam locomotive. While we are in the process of putting the new engine through its paces for a future review, we thought you’d like to see the new model […]
GROWING UP ON the east coast of Florida, I found Rocky Mountain electrification to be a pretty arcane subject. Whether the locomotives were those large, boxy things that evoked the pages of Tom Swift and his Electric Locomotive, or streamlined, dual-cab models that suggested they were some sort of super funky F units, these unusual […]
IT WAS THE DAWN of time. Electrification hadn’t strayed far from Thomas Edison’s lab. In the 1880s mechanical coal stoker was a wild fantasy of overworked firemen. Balloon stacks ruled the rails, and the Pennsylvania was still struggling to make its claim as the Standard Railroad of the World. It was in this dark era […]
BACK WHEN I was a lad, one of the first books I bought about railroading was Ron Ziel’s Twilight of the Steam Locomotive. Inside the covers were photos of derelict locomotives as well as steamers still earning their keep. A chapter covering excursion locomotives had a full-page action shot of Reading locomotive no. 2124 with […]
THE LATEST SWITCHER to be added to the MTH Premier line lineup is the Alco S-2, which was ubiquitous on American railroads and industrial operations 20 to 60 years ago. More than 1,400 of the 1,000-horsepower locomotives were built for U.S. railroads between 1940 and 1950. According to one diesel preservation website, there are at […]
IN THE GOLDEN YEARS of railroading, the Great Northern route from the Midwest to Seattle was undoubtedly the premier way to get to the Pacific Northwest. With such named trains as Empire Builder, Oriental Limited, and Fast Mail, the line’s reputation hung on swift, reliable passenger transportation as much as it did freight. In 1929 […]
