ATLAS O HAS CHOSEN to offer an O gauge model of a locomotive that doesn’t get much attention. Yet Fairbanks-Morse’s Alt.100.3 diesel, better know by its “Erie-Built” nickname, illuminates an interesting chapter in railroad history. During World War II, the federal government placed restrictions on the manufacture of diesel locomotives. Firms could make only those […]
THE K-LINE K4s 4-6-2 Pacific locomotive needs little introduction to railroad hobbyists because the prototype steamer was the standard Pacific-type favored by the Pennsylvania Railroad. In its search for the perfect 4-6-2, an engine that could adequately handle freight or passenger work, the Pennsy stumbled onto the K4s design and liked it so much that […]
A BIKER FRIEND TOLD ME that no one stops after getting one motorcycle, body piercing, or tattoo. I can’t personally verify his assertion, but I would amend it to read that no one stops with just a single Lionel log-loading accessory. On many of the traditional three-rail layouts that I’ve visited, the owner has a […]
LET ME SAY RIGHT OFF THE BAT, this is the sort of quality entry-level locomotive that Lionel should have come out with five years ago! But I’m not complaining, because it’s here now and it’s a winner! While Lionel has offered a few saddle tank locomotives in the past, this model is brand new. It […]
ONE OF THE MOST distinctive locomotive styles on any railroad – real or 1:48 scale – is the “Camelback,” also known as “Mother Hubbard.” The name “Camelback” came from the early days of railroading, when some steam locomotives were designed with their cabs atop the boiler. “Mother Hubbard” referred to locomotives that had the engineer […]
WORN DOWN BY THE Depression and the war years, the Virginian Railway embarked on a program in the 1940s to revive its aging fleet of locomotives using existing designs developed for railroads briefly owned by the Van Sweringen Brothers (Chesapeake & Ohio, Erie, Nickel Plate Road, and Pere Marquette). From these plans the Virginian produced […]
AMONG THE MOST MASSIVE locomotives on North American rails just about 100 years ago was the 0-8-8-0. Surprisingly, 85 locomotives with this wheel arrangement were in service in the early years of the 20th century. Surely the most interesting of them all were the Camelback, or Mother Hubbard, 0-8-8-0s run by the Erie Railroad. The […]
THE STORY OF THE A2a-class Berkshires of the Pittsburgh & Lake Erie Railroad is a pretty sad one. In the waning days of steam operation, the company decided that it needed to replace its World War I-vintage H7-class 2-8-2 Mikados with newer power. The railroad didn’t believe there was a viable diesel on the market […]
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 […]
