YOU’VE HEARD THIS story before. Big, six-axle diesels meet passenger trains and it’s love at first sight. Big, six-axle diesels take the trade by storm and become icons of modern railroading. Times change and railroads dump the once-revered diesels. So runs the tale of Electro Motive Division’s E8 diesels. Between 1949 and 1953, EMD sold […]
COAL IS TO LIONEL what ground beef is to McDonald’s. Where the fast food giant transforms its staple product into patties, melts cheese over it, and stacks it higher and higher on sesame seed buns, Lionel lifts, dumps, slides, and drops the bits of shredded plastic it has called coal since the late 1930s. During […]
A HANDFUL OF locomotive designs are elegant, and the streamlined look of the New York Central Dreyfuss Hudson 4-6-4 may be the most stylish of all. MTH Electric Trains has added a scale-sized version of the Dreyfuss to its Premier line, and it’s a doozy. Before World War II the New York Central set out […]
THE NORFOLK & WESTERN was the last major U.S. carrier to forsake steam power in favor of diesel. The railroad, deep in coal country, was renown for its fast passenger engines and hefty articulated freight haulers that could seemingly move mountains. The last and most advanced of the steamers operated by the N&W was the […]
FOR MORE THAN 25 years, Weaver has produced a vast array of rolling stock, brass steam locomotives, and great diesels in plastic. The latest challenge the Northumberland, Pa., firm has tackled is a die-cast metal locomotive. And not only is this the company’s first die-cast steamer, it is also its first steamer to include Lionel’s […]
WHILE STIFF COMPETITION among the bigger boys of the toy train world pushes O gauge locomotives to new levels of sophistication, Williams has found its niche producing well-made toy trains – minus some of the frills – at a price that is well within reach of most operators. Among the newest items on Williams’ list […]
ONE OF THE HOTTEST locomotives ever made was the streamlined Pennsy K4-class Torpedo. The rocket-shaped steamer looked ready to launch even when standing still. In the 1930s, when the Pennsylvania Railroad re-designed its signature train the Broadway Limited, management wanted the train’s 4-6-2 locomotive to be just as striking as the passenger cars. Industrial designer […]
IF YOU ASK collectors and operators of postwar Lionel trains which accessories they prize, most will put the no. 264 Operating Forklift Platform high on their list. They like its reliability, compact appearance, and neat action. Lionel cataloged the 264 for only four years, from 1957 through 1960. That fact and the fascination this accessory […]
COMPETITION HAS always brought out the best in toy train manufacturers. Just consider the fantastic accessories that Lionel and A.C. Gilbert brought out during the postwar era that represented similar but not identical answers to what the market wanted. Kids loved pretending that their trains hauled logs and coal, so each company created operating loaders. […]
THE ALCO RS-3 ROAD switcher was one of the Schenectady, N.Y., locomotive builder’s most popular diesels. Between 1950 and 1956, Alco produced 1,375 of the 1,600-horsepower units for North American railroads. Only the Alco S-2 switcher outsold the RS-3 in the United States. The locomotive is a rugged and reliable engine, as evidenced by the […]
THE MILWAUKEE ROAD bipolar electric left an indelible imprint on the toy train world. The body style was quite popular with prewar manufacturers and it captivated a generation of model railroaders.Oddly, this singular engine was ignored in the postwar and modern eras, and now, on the brink of the Digital Era, we finally have MTH’s […]
TODAY, UNION PACIFIC’S articulated M-10000 train is quaint, in an odd but wondrous, Buck Rogers sort of way. But in 1934, the turret-topped train had the impact of a Concorde SST jetliner on rails. The M-10000 and the Burlington’s Zephyr were the first gleaming streamliners in a world of ponderous smoky-black steam locomotives pulling long […]
