K-LINE’S O gauge Big Boy locomotive is made for John Q. Trainguy or Susy Q. Tinplater: the operator with a tight-radius layout and an equally tight budget, but who longs to operate trains at the Big Boy level. MTH and Lionel in their RailKing and LionMaster lines have used selective compression to build articulated locomotives […]
I HAVE A CONFESSION to make: I have a bias regarding steam locomotion. My favorite steam locomotives have the wheel arrangements 2-8-2 and 4-8-4. Everything else is “too big,” and the rest are “Weak Willies.” My bias began to crack with the MTH Premier line 4-4-2 Atlantic steamer (CTT, May 2001) and that crack has […]
TO CROSS THE Rocky Mountains, the Union Pacific railroad was always looking for the next big thing. This eye toward innovation gave rise to such notable giants as the 4-8-8-4 Big Boy, the 4-12-2 Union Pacific, the massive DDA40X diesel, and the turbines. In 1952, the Union Pacific received the first of 10 4,500-horsepower turbine […]
J.L. COWEN WOULD probably smile at what Williams Electric Trains has been up to. Amid the scramble to seize the high end of the marketplace, company President Jerry Williams and Marketing Manager Larry Harrington are focusing on producing simple, well-made trains with a postwar flair that won’t break the bank. Starting with a copy of […]
OKAY, WHAT DOES THE typical American railroad buff know about British railway history? Tick-tock, tick-tock. Time’s up! Still drawing a blank? Then read on. British railroads have an exotic history just like American lines, but in an appropriately condensed land mass. Dozens of 19th-century railroad companies built a tangle of lines with fast passenger trains, […]
AMERICA’S MORALE took quite the beating in the turbulent 1960s and early ’70s. As the nation’s 1976 bicentennial approached, many Americans expressed indifference to a celebration. But not railroad enthusiast Ross Rowland. Rowland, in the best tradition of comedian Steve Martin, had a “Wild and Crazy” idea to celebrate America’s birthday. Taking his cue from […]
THE PENNSYLVANIA RAILROAD’S famous 4-4-4-4 Duplex drive T1 locomotive, designed by Raymond Loewy, epitomizes the rakish, spaceship look of industrial design in the late prewar years. If the locomotive’s outline looks familiar it should: its shape has been reproduced on thousands of calendars, artwork, and even non-railroad-related advertising. The Pennsy ordered two prototype Duplex-drive locomotives […]
TWO HEADLINES IN a supermarket tabloid: “Elvis returns to Graceland” and “Lionel makes all-new Standard gauge trains.” Which do you believe? A few years ago, the answer would have been neither. But hold on to your blue-suede shoes. While a living Elvis isn’t back at Graceland yet, Lionel indeed has made all-new Standard gauge trains: […]
SOMEWHERE IN THE ANNALS of toy train history, a tiny celebrity steam engine got lost in the crowd. When it was found, it somehow got lost again. In 1999, MTH began producing an O gauge die-cast model based on the Baltimore & Ohio’s C-16 “Docksider” steam switcher. The biggest surprise was that this is a […]
Kevin Strong 1:24-scale water towerKamloops Junction Wood Products850 Ida LaneKamloops, British Columbia V2B 6V1 CanadaPrice: $119.99 Can.Note: Manufacturer is no longer in business Craftsman-level kit; pre-cut cedar stripwood; Sonotube section for the tank substructure; corrugated plastic sub-roof material; sandpaper roofing material; resin castings for the water spout, counterweights, and nut-bolt-washers; steel wire for the tank […]
IN 1996, THE FIRST MTH RailKing articulated locomotive – the no. 30-1107 Union Pacific Challenger 4-6-6-4 – rolled onto tinplate track and created quite a stir. Regardless of its reduced dimensions, no manufacturer had ever offered an articulated, die-cast metal steamer for the small layout, tight-radius crowd. Its success heralded 1997’s Allegheny 2-6-6-6, 1998’s Big […]
K-LINE’S UNITED STATES Railway Administration light 2-8-2 Mikado commemorates the 625 steam engines of this type built for U.S. railroads during and shortly after the First World War. The United States entered the war on April 6, 1917, and that December President Wilson placed U.S. railroads under the control of the railroad administration (USRA). In […]
