CAN THERE EVER BE too many O gauge Santa Fe F units on the market? Probably not. General Motors cranked out these diesels by the thousands, and both the high and mighty lines, as well as scores of railroads you probably never heard of, used these trusty machines. As with New York Central Hudsons, the […]
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 […]
MOUNTAIN RAILROADING is a tough job in North America. In the last century both the Great Northern and Milwaukee Road utilized electric locomotives to master this beastly job. The grades of Washington state’s Cascade Mountains were a tough nut to crack for the Great Northern. The first Cascade Tunnel was built in 1900. At an […]
THESE ARE GOOD DAYS for Reading Railroad fans. First was the arrival of Weaver’s brass G1sa and G2sa Pacific steamers (CTT, March 2002) and now SGL Lines Electric Trains , a newcomer to the train business, has imported a fine example of the G3-class Pacific and matching Reading passenger cars.In 1948, the Reading railroad committed […]
K-LINE’S O GAUGE Allegheny 2-6-6-6 steam locomotive is the second of the firm’s miniaturized Mallets. Like K-Line’s previously released 1:64 scale, O gauge 4-8-8-4 Big Boy, this 1:58 scale Allegheny is targeted at operators with O-31 curves and tight budgets. The prototype Allegheny evolved from a 2-12-6 concept for the Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad. Lima […]
WAY BACK IN 1965, I showed Joe, my next door neighbor, my prize birthday present: a James Bond Shooting Attaché Case (made by MPC, no less). Joe, a grownup insurance salesman, opened it up, smiled, and said, “Boy, Bobby, you could commit mayhem with this!” Opening the box for the Operation Iraqi Freedom train set, […]
AMID A SEA OF limited-edition, $1,400 locomotives, why should anyone be interested in this modest steamer? Well, first, it is designed to run through curves as tight as O-27 – and there are still plenty of operators using O-27, O-31, and O-54 curved track. Second, the tooling is new. This isn’t a lame attempt to […]
WHEN I FIRST SAW the ads for the LionMaster Hudson, I presumed that it was launched in response to K-Line’s similarly priced, scale-sized Hudson (CTT, July 2003). Not so. While all new like the K-Line Hudson and featuring TrainMaster Command Control, Rail Sounds, Odyssey speed control, and a wireless tether, the Lionel model is the […]
FOR THE PAST FEW YEARS Lionel has been making some very smart choices when capitalizing on its past. Offering models of never-produced items and reissues of desirable sets from the postwar era is especially attractive to many of today’s operators and collectors. A reissue of the no. 2527 Super O gauge missile launcher outfit from […]
WHEN ANDREW’S RAIDERS tried to steal the Western & Atlantic Railroad’s General locomotive during the Civil War, they certainly had no idea how many fantasy “great locomotive chases” they’d inspire in the decades to come. Lionel, for one, has had great fun with the concept. When the Lionel Corp. produced its postwar nos. 1862 and […]
ONE OF THE MOST distinctive experimental locomotives of the 1930s was the Pennsylvania Railroad’s S1-class Duplex-drive 6-4-4-6 locomotive. Originally developed as a replacement for the railroad’s venerable K4s 4-6-2 Pacific locomotives, the big S1, of which only one was built, was designed to be a high-speed passenger engine, capable of hauling a 1,200-ton train at […]
PLANES, TRAINS, AND automobiles. Back in the 1950s, the birth of the Interstate Highway system launched the era of long-distance motoring while at the same time air travel became more affordable and more common for ordinary people. Planes and automobiles were on the upswing, but passenger trains were not. Most railroads still weren’t ready to […]
